The most difficult problems I have ever worked on had one thing in common: no single discipline could fully explain them.
Companies often have every piece
of the picture, but never the whole
Legal questions depended on technical realities. Technical solutions created business consequences. Business decisions introduced legal risk.
The problem was never a shortage of expertise. Every specialist I worked with was skilled, careful, and right about their own part, but nobody could translate between them.
Each one spoke with precision, but rarely in the same language.
That translation is my work. I sit between legal, technical, and business to find the places where each assumed another was handling a certain risk.
For years I treated this as an obstacle to my career. It became the career.
My instinct for coherence is older than this business. In every role I have held, I built analytical dashboards and records systems for the same reason each time: something that mattered to everyone existed across several minds and nobody could see it as a whole.
The Cyber Risk Ownership Map is that same solution. It is the first time I set out to build something instead of realizing I already had.
The Blind Men and the Elephant
An ancient parable tells of several blind men encountering an elephant for the first time.
- One feels the trunk and insists an elephant is like a snake.
- Another touches the leg and argues it is like a tree.
- Another grasps the tail and is convinced it resembles a rope.
Each perspective is valid, but none can see that it is merely one part of the whole.
Only when someone bridges the gaps between their perspectives can the elephant be fully understood by all.
Four roles, one problem
I have been the incident response counsel, the investigator, the person building compliance into software, and the person inside the business trying to make decisions with input from each domain. The Assessment exists because I have sat in each of those seats and watched the handoffs fail.
Law Enforcement
- Federal Bureau of Investigation
- Mississippi Attorney General's Office
- Mississippi Department of Corrections
Legal
- Global cyber incident response firm
- Mississippi-licensed attorney*
- Forensic report review
- Data privacy framework mapping
Software
- Top-ranked intellectual property firm
- Software development for data processing
- Compliance by design
- System architecture and controls
Operations
- Fortune 200 subsidiary
- Engineering, procurement, and construction
- Operational risk and compliance
- Multi-state licensing and registration
*I am licensed to practice law in Mississippi but I do not provide legal services, legal advice, or representation through this practice.
How I can help you
The Cyber Risk Ownership Assessment is my expertise, turned into a method. Eight domains, every related function interviewed, and a written answer to the question of who actually owns what risk.