The Evolving Role of the CISO

Overview: Skills and Responsibilities of Strategic Leaders in a Digital Age 

With cyber threats becoming more sophisticated and frequent, CISOs should be seen as vital to an organisation's leadership team. Their role has evolved from primarily overseeing security operations to being a critical player in digital innovation and risk management.

In 2025, the demand for CISOs is expected to increase by at least 15-20% as organisations recognise the importance of cybersecurity in maintaining both regulatory compliance and customer trust.

The 3 Modern CISOs:

• Strategic CISOs (28%):
• These CISOs are essential strategic partners, with both C-suite access and boardroom influence. They receive a higher rate of compensation and report greater job satisfaction than their peers. Despite this, they are often still viewed as technical partners, not true business partners.
• Functional CISOs (50%):
• Limited by their visibility in the boardroom and executive access, it is more of a challenge for these CISOs to create a broad and impactful influence. Often, they also face scope creep, limiting their time for strategic initiatives.
• Tactical CISOs (22%):
• Viewed by senior leadership as technical practitioners, these CISOs struggle to connect with the board and have very little overall influence.

With almost three quarters of CISOs struggling to engage with the board, many organisations are dismissing the importance of this role’s strategic value and expertise.

Forbes

The Evolving Role of the CISO: 

We spoke with three leading technology professionals about the changing technical landscape and the future of the CISO role.

Jon Staniforth, Chief Information Security Officer (CSO & CISO) said:

The Changing Landscape:

The cyber threat landscape continues to evolve rapidly, driven by the accelerating pace of technological change. Technology cycles are shortening, with businesses and consumers quickly adopting new technologies for their functional benefits. Cybercriminals are even quicker to exploit these technologies (such as AI, deepfakes, and IoT), often far faster than organisations can implement corresponding defensive controls. Ransomware attacks are becoming increasingly targeted, while data theft continues to fuel fraud and identity theft.

Geopolitical tensions add complexity, with state-sponsored actors targeting critical infrastructure and supply chains or just emulating independent criminals as a revenue stream. Despite this, cross-border cooperation is improving, with international law enforcement teams collaborating, sharing intelligence, and coordinating actions to dismantle groups like LockBit and other cybercriminal operations.

The CISO’s Expanding Responsibilities:

The CISO role has evolved from a primarily technical position into a broader role that encompasses risk management, regulatory compliance, innovation, digital transformation, operational continuity, and incident management.

The role requires both technical expertise and the ability to align security initiatives with business objectives. A successful CISO must influence and manage cross-functional activities, integrating security protocols and practices into the organisation to ensure they become a natural part of business operations.

The Future of CISO Leadership:

The future of CISO leadership will continue to evolve as organisations mature and undergo digital transformations, increasingly recognising cybersecurity as integral to their overall business strategy. CISOs will need to help organisations adopt emerging technologies to strengthen cyber defences, accelerate operations, and drive cost-effectiveness through automation while defining flexible, scalable, and sustainable architectures.

They must balance investment in foundational controls (such as Zero Trust, access management, and patching) with supporting innovation, enabling sales, and leveraging cybersecurity as a competitive differentiator, as customers demand more secure products and services. CISOs must also continue to find ways to demonstrate the tangible benefits of security and its value to the organisation.

Christiane Baetz, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) said:

The Changing Landscape:

Cyber is a highly dynamic environment which is even more volatile in the current geopolitical climate resulting in more attacks especially on Critical National Infrastructure, supply chains and other industries. In addition, criminals use AI to become more and more sophisticated in their attacks.

The number of cyber attacks is continuously growing, as such organisations need to continuously invest in their protections in order to not fall behind. The NCSC (National Cyber Security Centre) is a great source and provides guidance on how organisations can reduce the risk of ransomware attacks and breaches.

The CISO’s Expanding Responsibilities:

The role of a CISO has been evolving with ever expanding responsibilities. Some key focus areas include Product Security, Compliance, Incident Response and business resilience.

Whilst technical expertise is essential, CISOs need to be visionary, a great communicator, understand the business, risk and finance. The combination of this varied skill set enables CISOs to think about the bigger picture and advise on appropriate steps offering the greatest return for organisations. For example CISOs need to have the technical background to translate a cyber risk into a business risk with impact on business strategy and EBITDA that the Board can easily understand.

The Future of CISO Leadership:

Reporting lines of CISOs are not fully clear and consistent across organisations. It's critical that CISO's have a seat at the table - both Board and Senior Leadership. They need to translate how the cyber strategy aligns with business strategy and in turn how cyber risk translates into business risk including business impact and financials. This helps to justify budgets and areas of investment that are critical to the business.

Whilst AI is a key focus for businesses right now, CISOs need to collaborate with the business to understand the company specific AI use cases in order to determine how security can best protect the company whilst enabling business operations. Before getting over excited and carried away with new technology trends, it's essential that businesses have successfully embedded security foundations first i.e. we can't secure a house if the foundations aren't solid.

Roy Whitehead, CIO / CTO / CISO said:

The CISO’s Expanding Responsibilities:

There is a difference between reality, the talent pool and the view of the buyers, hiring managers of both talent and services.

Reality – compared to the CIO and CTO talent pool, many CISOs lack the commercial and delivery expertise in my opinion to operate effectively and bring true business value.

I’ve spent 30 years in and out of security as a tech and delivery leader and businessman so my view is formed both from working within and outside of security. That does not mean there are not some talented, qualified individuals but the buyers see this and the reputation proceeds them so they often end up either in ‘Head of’ roles or similar reporting into CIOs/CTOs etc.

Ironically security leaders and others spend much time advising tech folk and business folk how to run and manage their people, processes and tech yet have never walked in their shoes.

That does nothing for credibility or ensuring that the CIA and hence risk gets mitigated to the levels it often should.

The increasing range of qualifications is making the role and cyber security per se becoming every more insular.

The solution?

• Stop focussing on qualification and focus on people.
• Get basic accounting skills and get budgetary management experience.
• Do something outside of security, business, delivery anything so you understand better who and what you’re advising and establish credibility.
• Stop throwing delivery to ‘PMs’ As a customer and leader you have a responsibility to have basic delivery, architecture, business and leadership skills and experience (not just in security).
• Engage people and be interested in them. Empathy is a powerful tool.
• Get coaching and mentorship, swallow your pride. Folk like me will be delighted to help you.

Building a successful team:

As a CISO, talent management and acquisition extend far beyond simply filling open roles. Building a resilient, internally aligned cybersecurity team is a strategic necessity for long-term success.

However, one of the most significant challenges that CISOs face is the skills gap in cybersecurity talent. Additionally, there is a critical need to address gender diversity within the CISO community and broader cybersecurity roles.

54% of tech companies struggle to find qualified candidates for open positions. Robert Half

This is in contract to the 79% of CIOs and senior IT leaders who plan to increase their IT staff levels to support growth objectives.

Your talent pipeline:

Building a successful IT team requires a combination of internal expertise and specialist skills. Talent Locker understands this need. Our extensive talent pool offers access to a diverse range of highly skilled professionals, so you can strategically fill specific gaps within your existing team and achieve your project goals with greater control.

Get in touch with the team to discuss your upcoming hiring requirements.

Sam McWilliam, Lead Consultant Technology & Change

 sam@talentlocker.co.uk