Chief Risk Officer - CRO

In our current litigation-happy society, the Chief Risk Officer, or CRO, has become a vitally important executive for corporations, especially those reliant on technology. The controversies over hacking of the 2016 Presidential elections, compromises of email account information belonging to a number of banks, as well as corporations such as Yahoo!, Target, and others all demonstrate the liability risk to any company of cyber crime, ID theft, and a host of other technology-related issues. As such, the CRO has to oversee policies to mitigate those risks, such as data security, ID security, and email security, and also devise proper safeguards against corporate espionage, especially when it comes to intellectual property protection.

And, of course...there are the old standby risks, such as SEC, FTC, and other regulatory body compliance, public relations risks for potential slander or libel accusations, insurance, workplace environment, and other types of conventional liability.

While the CRO is often asked to go above and beyond to prevent risks to the corporation, they cannot be held responsible for rank stupidity. So the next time an executive uses “password” for his or her password, don’t blame the CTO.