Corporate Social Responsibility
CISO Lens was created to support the most senior security executives from the largest and most systemically important organisations in our region. Our mission is to support the cyber resilience of the economies and the people of Australia and New Zealand. And, while our work is predominantly online, our concern and our work is for the well-being of people - members of our communities and families, our industry colleagues, and our friends.
Consequently, CISO Lens is committed to not only being a law-abiding enterprise - which is the bare minimum we should expect of any company trading in this region - and we are committed to making a positive difference to society.
We have set ourselves four questions to check new initiatives against, and to ensure we stay on mission.
Is what we're doing good for the members?
Is what we're doing good for the community?
Is what we're doing good for the nation?
Is what we're doing sustainable?
In practice
Below are some of the practices we do (or specifically avoid doing) to ensure we are on mission.
Governance
One of the practical ways we work to ensure what we're on mission is through ensuring that we identify and avoid any conflicts of interest. CISO Lens holds that the money flow does determine who is actually the customer, and it’s imperative that our members know that they are not our product.
CISO Lens only takes members from organisations that do not have security sales as a core line of business. We do not admit people that carry a sales target.
CISO Lens does not take money from companies that have security sales as a core line of business.
CISO Lens does not provide information on our clients to vendors or conduct any form of lead generation on behalf of vendors.
Sponsorship
Sponsorships are an important mechanism to support charities and not-for-profits that are focusing their energies on socially important causes. CISO Lens is a proud sponsor of:
The Australian Women in Security Network. CISO Lens has provided financial sponsorship to this important initiative in; 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. We believe there is not another movement in Australia that is helping improve the culture of the Australian security industry the way AWSN is. The Australian Women in Security Network is encouraging more women to participate in the security industry and provide them with connections and support through their careers.
KYUP! Project, a groundbreaking, evidence-based initiative that confronts the alarming rates of violence against women and children in Australia. Shockingly, intimate partner violence is the leading cause of preventable death for girls aged 15 to women aged 44. To combat this issue, KYUP! Project programs and workshops focus on building self-worth and self-defense skills. So far, KYUP! Project has empowered over 10,000 young individuals throughout Australia and New Zealand. In 2024, CISO Lens entered a three year sponsorship agreement with KYUP! Project.
Outreach and initiatives
CISO Lens members are not representative of a typical Australian or New Zealand organisation: our member organisations have allocated the resources to appoint a dedicated staff person to the role of being solely accountable for cyber security, and supported this person with dedicated budget and a team. Most organisations in Australia and New Zealand could only dream of these resources.
So, fulfilling on our mission as a strategic information sharing and analysis community, CISO Lens takes the insights and experiences from our community of members and shares these with the public. These public resources are available on our Benchmark and Reports pages, and no registration or payments are required.
From time to time, we also create initiatives. A current initiative (2024) is Project Robust; for strengthening Australia's cyber incident response management arrangements. Our intention through these initiatives is to bring the focus and expertise of our members and staff to a common challenge and work collaboratively on it.