Nisha Rani , CISO at Emirates Leisure Retail , describes her strategies for effective leadership and successfully navigating the challenges facing cybersecurity leaders .

How do you cultivate leadership within your cybersecurity team and foster a culture of continuous learning and innovation in cybersecurity practices ?

To cultivate leadership and promote a culture of continuous learning and innovation in my team my focus is always on the following areas :

Lead by example : Demonstrate commitment to learning . Every year I endeavour to learn something new , whether it might be doing some industry certification , enrolling in a course or learning a new skill . For example , to improve my technical skills in cybersecurity I completed an Advanced Executive Program in Cybersecurity .

Training programs : I make sure that we implement regular training sessions and workshops for everyone to learn more about cybersecurity .

Encourage collaboration : Collaboration is very important in cybersecurity . Be it implementing a new security control , advising others on

cybersecurity control , or getting your team ’ s support to perform the assigned task .

Recognise efforts : I always make sure that I recognise others ’ efforts , it makes them feel valued and will always support you in your future endeavours .

Stay informed : I like my team to be informed about the latest cybersecurity trends .

Feedback and improvement : I have implemented quarterly feedback sessions with my team members to discuss not only their performance but improvement areas .

What are the key challenges in maintaining a balance between dayto-day cybersecurity operations and the pursuit of innovative security projects , and how do you navigate these challenges within your team ?

Balancing day-to-day cybersecurity operations with innovative security projects presents several challenges , including resource allocation ,

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