What it takes to win that CSO role
What it takes to win that CSO role
https://www.csoonline.com/article/4143208/what-it-takes-to-win-that-cso-role.html
Publish Date: 2026-03-16 03:02:00
Source Domain: www.csoonline.com
“I view the CISO position as a business leadership role rather than just a technical one, focusing on people and strategy,” Kirby explains. “The ability to communicate and translate for a broad spectrum of audiences — technical, non-technical, business, non-business — is critical. As a CISO, you need to be able to help people understand the ‘why’ of what we do.”
Once viewed primarily as a senior technologist focused on systems and controls, today’s CISO now sits at the heart of business strategy, Kirby says. The modern CISO is also, by necessity, a futurist: forecasting not just threats, but how digital trust, identity, and security will determine which businesses succeed and which fail.
Minimal business and technology skills for CSO candidates
The gold standard CSO candidate today has a T-shaped background: deep expertise in one or two domains with broad fluency across the rest of the security ecosystem, Breckenridge explains. Here, three areas stand out:
