The Anatomy of a CISO: Today’s top security leaders

by Nate Lord on Tuesday March 1, 2016

What does the typical Fortune 100 CISO look like? We researched the top security leaders at F100 companies to get a better idea – here’s what we found.

The chief information security officer (CISO) plays a critical role in a corporation’s information security program. As the highest-ranking security executive within an organization, CISOs are tasked with developing and overseeing the execution of the company’s information security strategy across all functional areas: prevention, detection, incident response, risk and vulnerability management, security architecture and operations, and regulatory compliance. The CISO position is a relatively new role in the enterprise leadership structure, but the recent prevalence of data breaches and other widely publicized security incidents has made the chief information security officer position commonplace in modern enterprises.

So what are some of the common traits of today’s leading CISOs? We researched the CISOs and security leaders at Fortune 100 companies to learn more about their backgrounds – their education, certifications, work experience, tenure, and more – and compiled our findings into the following infographic.