How CISOs Can Contend With Increasing Scrutiny from Regulators

As those responsible for their organization’s cybersecurity defenses, CISOs have been facing extremely high stakes since the mid-1990s, when the role was first created. Advancing threats have made the position increasingly challenging, but it turns out that things could get far worse.

A concatenation of events in 2023 raised the bar, including new SEC reporting rules and a growing trend whereby CISOs are now being held personally responsible for cyber incidents.

Security teams are struggling against growing attack surfaces, with research from TechTarget's Enterprise Strategy Group reporting that third-party connections, IoT networks, and public cloud infrastructure have driven up the attack surface in 62% of organizations.

At the same time, AI and RaaS (Ransomware-as-a-Service) are making cyber attacks both more sophisticated and easier to perpetrate, forcing security into constant firefighting mode.

As team leaders, CISOs already had to set and deliver on cyber strategy, a task made harder at a time when 41% of security teams are understaffed, and 51% are held back by budget constraints. It's no surprise that this pressure results in high levels of stress and burnout. Work-related stress affects 94% of CISOs, and 65% admit that it's compromising their ability to do their jobs.

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