Q&A with Paolo Dal Cin

Paolo Dal Cin

Global Lead, Accenture Security

What’s top of mind for you in cyber right now and why?

We are hearing four consistent concerns from organizations across all industries and geographies.

First, geopolitical shifts are creating new risks prompting organizations to reexamine their areas of exposure. At the same time, inflation and supply chain interruptions are stressing business operations. As a result, CEOs and security leaders are asking how they can improve cybersecurity and risk management while simultaneously managing costs long-term.

Second, recent supply chain attacks revealed the potential vulnerability of the increasingly interconnected systems that are now critical to business. This is driving organizations to ask for help in understanding their true risk footprint including third- and ‘Nth’-party suppliers.

In addition, increasing regulatory and shareholder expectations are adding complexity and challenging organizations to clearly articulate how they are managing risk and programmatic goals. Regulations around data sovereignty, privacy, cybersecurity and incident breach notification in particular vary across jurisdictions and industries. As a result, organizations are trying to understand how to grow business while navigating challenging and sometimes conflicting expectations.

Finally, with an estimated 3.4 million workers needed to close the industry workforce gap globally, organizations are looking for more creative and effective ways to fill cyber roles and retain talent. One example is apprenticeships, which widen the talent pipeline and help organizations become more diverse—which in turn fuels innovation. It’s also critical for organizations to help their people succeed by creating dynamic career pathways and investing in growing future leaders.

What will you be watching for most in the next six months?

How organizations around the world respond to shifts in the geopolitical landscape and the resulting cyber threats will be critical. As always, we will closely monitor any new zero-day vulnerabilities and cyber incidents involving third parties, especially those that may affect critical systems. We will also track how regulations and shareholder expectations change the way organizations communicate their risk management efforts—including how they energize and enable the C-suite to be active in this mission. In addition, we’ll be looking to help organizations retain, grow, and strengthen cyber talent—as well as how they move quickly to encourage cooperation between public and private sectors.

What will be the next big drivers of the evolution of public-private partnerships?

Geopolitical forces will drive allied countries’ efforts to share more information across sectors and borders. We already saw the seeds of this being planted with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

While several highly regulated sectors share cyber threat intelligence and incident information within and across information security teams, more critical industries will share intelligence within their sectors, and this will be supported by government investment. This broadening of cross-sector sharing will set the stage for information security teams and C-suite members to engage more with their peers on cybersecurity.

Cybersecurity is a team sport. It requires collective action to improve cyber resilience for public and private organizations. As part of that effort, we believe forward-leaning organizations will begin considering cyber resilience as part of their ESG framework because it’s vital to making the world safer now and for future generations.

Read more insights from today's top cyber leaders in The Cyber Initiatives Magazine.

Paolo Dal Cin brings more than 20 years of experience to C-Level leadership at the largest organizations in the world. He oversees the full spectrum of cybersecurity services across the globe and is a member of Accenture’s Global Management Committee. Previously, Paolo led Accenture’s Security Business in Europe. He is a Principal Member of the Cyber Initiatives Group.