Lost in translation: Cybersecurity board reporting for CISOs
Lost in translation: Cybersecurity board reporting for CISOs
Publish Date: 2026-06-03 16:16:00
Source Domain: www.techtarget.com
Hundreds of security leaders from across industries recently packed a ballroom in National Harbor, Md., to tackle a challenge some consider even more daunting than nation-state hackers or AI-fueled cyber threats: presenting to a company’s board members so they understand and appreciate the formidable cybersecurity risks the organization faces.
“How many of you get excited when your annual car insurance premiums come up for renewal?” said Sam Olyaei, a managing vice president at Gartner, during the session at the Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit 2026. “That is how the board has viewed cybersecurity. It’s a regulatory thing. It’s a checklist. It’s an attestation.”
Ten years ago, according to Olyaei and Gartner analyst Tom Scholtz, only 25% of CISOs presented to their boards. A show of hands from session participants suggested nearly all do today. With major data breaches now often making headlines, the board’s view of those presentations is also changing. According to Gartner, 93% of board members agree that cyber-risk poses a threat to shareholder value, while 98% believe threats will grow within the next two years. The challenge, according to Olyaei and Sholtz, is that executive boards don’t share the same priorities as CISOs and rarely speak the same figurative language.
Know your audience
CISOs in attendance shared that they struggle to translate the abundance of operational data into narratives that resonate with their boards. That problem stems from a common disconnect, according to the Gartner analysts.
“Many of the reports that I review are actually structured around cybersecurity, not around the business,” Scholtz said. “When we talk about things in cybersecurity terms, we get very enthusiastic about it. My wife says, ‘Normal people don’t get excited about that stuff.'”
Know your audience and consider what they can easily digest, Olyaei added. Otherwise, important messages get lost in translation.
