Securing funding and delivery for a cloud platform remediation

Situation

An enterprise cloud platform carried architectural risk that the technical teams understood well enough. What had not happened was putting it in terms an investment decision could be made against.

Constraints

Fixing it needed money. Money needed executive sponsorship. Sponsorship meant explaining the risk to an audience without a security background, and doing it without either overstating the problem or burying it.

Approach

I produced a detailed technical assessment, and alongside it an executive presentation that put the architectural position in terms of business impact and a costed path to fixing it. That also separated what needed doing straight away from what belonged in a longer programme.

Outcome

Funding was approved for both the immediate work and the longer programme, and the work was delivered. Separately, I re-architected and implemented a critical solution for the organisation, which the CISO later commended.