The Path to Playing Offense vs Cyberattackers Requires Communicators to be Conveners

Talk about a body of work, Ray Kerins has held senior communication positions at Merck, Pfizer and most recently at Bayer, where he was SVP, head of corporate affairs. He’s also been on the other side, at Porter Novelli and GCI Group (now BCW), where he started the same week as Bob Pearson, some 23 years ago. Both Pearson and he now are PRNEWS Hall of Fame members. And Kerins has joined Pearson’s newest venture, The Bliss Group, as CEO of its Next Solutions Group.

One of the first things he did was change the group’s name, from Next Security to Next Solutions. It’s more than a name change, though.

This is “an opportunity to do more corporate communication-style engagement, with cybersecurity obviously being one of the main pillars,” he says. The solutions he wants to provide center on corporate-level engagement, including crisis and issues management, public-private partnerships and C-suite executive visibility.

One of the keys to fighting cyber, he says, involves the communicator’s role as a convener of corporate departments. IT alone can’t tackle cybercrime. “It’s too big” an issue, he says. PR pros are key to a multi-pronged effort, which includes training, he says.