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Once viewed as just guardians, CISOs now drive business strategy, foster resilience, and enable innovation – here’s how you do it.
For decades, the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) was cast in the role of a gatekeeper – tasked with saying “No!”, building firewalls, and enforcing compliance.
But that is no longer the case.
Today’s CISO is more than a defender. The role is part strategist, part communicator, part risk manager – but always in the service of the organisation they protect.
Boards and CEOs don’t want to hear about CVEs or the latest threat actors. They want to understand risk – measurable, financial, and reputational – and how it impacts the bottom line. Framing cyber security in terms of business continuity, customer trust, and revenue impact is essential – it’s the CISO’s role to explain this clearly, and without fear or favour.
Another shift is the perception of security as something that gets in the way of business-as-usual. Security leaders must understand and embrace secure-by-design thinking, embedding protections into workflows and business processes from the outset.
Think of it this way – would you launch a new product without input from finance or marketing? Security should be just as built-in.
Relationships matter. Cyber security does not exist in a vacuum – it spans legal, HR, operations, finance… Every aspect of a modern business. Legal teams need clear incident disclosure plans. HR needs to understand that cyber security protocols need to be part of the onboarding process. Finance needs to see a clear return on investments in network hardening and incident response.
Then there’s resilience. Compliance with regulations is vital, but a checklist approach won’t stop ransomware operators or other sophisticated threat actors. The modern CISO must push for resilience: the ability to not just prevent incidents, but to detect, respond, and recover quickly from them. That means regular tabletop exercises, honest assessments of cyber maturity, hard decisions, and building out a playbook for when compromise inevitably occurs. It’s the CISO who should be defining how the board reacts to any cyber incident.
Finally, leadership is as much about influence as authority. The best CISOs don’t lead with fear – they cultivate trust. They create a culture where employees understand their role in keeping an organisation secure, where developers and other stakeholders see security as a benefit, and where executives view it as something that delivers long-term value and protects the brand from harm.
Empathy, mentorship, and communication are just as vital as technical know-how – that’s where the real power lies.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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