By Jeremy Ventura, Field CISO, Myriad360
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve sat in a boardroom, pointing to pages of vulnerability data, only for the CFO to lean in and ask, “What does this mean for us?” In that single moment, it becomes clear: having deep technical skill isn’t enough if I can’t translate security threats into the language of business consequences. Years ago, I thought that if I could just list every critical vulnerability—preferably with color-coded charts—the urgency would speak for itself. But as I learned in a Fortune 500 environment, it’s never that simple.
When Technical Leadership Backfires
Early in my career, I interviewed to replace a CISO who had all the technical brilliance you could want. He knew how to rebuild a kernel, script his way out of any crisis, and speak four programming languages fluently. Yet in less than a year, he alienated his vendors and security staff so badly that the company had no choice but to let him go. His fatal move? Forcing out a perfectly functional tool—one the team had relied on for five solid years—just so he could bring in a product he personally preferred. That might have made sense on a purely technical level, but it blindsided the engineers who knew the environment best. It also antagonized the vendor, which had been a key partner for the organization’s overall infrastructure strategy. The breakdown of trust and morale was immediate.
The Cost of Ignoring Business Impact
This is a classic example of what happens when security leadership operates in a silo, prioritizing personal technical preferences over business needs. And it’s not an isolated issue. According to a survey by Delinea, 61% of IT security decision-makers believe their leadership overlooks cybersecurity’s role in business success, leading to negative consequences in 89% of organizations. When security decisions are made without aligning with broader business objectives, they don’t just cause friction—they actively harm the company.
When the company reached out to me, they didn’t ask if I could write scripts or configure their SIEM. They asked how I would collaborate with their existing teams and weigh technical needs against business realities. By then, I’d worked in both hyper-technical security roles and more business-facing positions, so I understood why they were so cautious. They’d been burned by a CISO who had all the engineering answers but no sense of how to integrate those answers into a thriving business ecosystem.
Why Metrics Alone Don’t Win Executive Buy-In
This challenge extends beyond leadership styles—it’s about how security is framed as a function. A purely data-driven approach can create "false precision," where CISOs focus so much on technical metrics that they lose sight of the bigger picture. Research published in MIT Sloan Management Review found that overreliance on quantitative analysis can lead to misplaced confidence, as numbers alone often fail to capture real-world complexities. The lesson? Technical expertise is crucial, but it must be balanced with the ability to interpret and act on business impact.
I see this gulf every time a technical manager tries to tell an executive team that, say, 500 employees clicked on a phishing link last quarter. Yes, that number is factual—but unless you connect those clicks to wasted productivity, breach likelihood, or actual financial exposure, it remains a meaningless statistic to the board. More data doesn’t automatically mean clearer insight. In Qualifying Risk Is Not Enough, I wrote about how labeling vulnerabilities as “critical” is only step one; you have to articulate the operational risk that “critical” implies. Does it threaten revenue-generating applications? Does it open the door to regulatory fines or public backlash if someone exploits it? Without this context, you’re just tossing around a color-coded label.
And this problem is widespread. A survey by ReliaQuest and Ponemon Research found that only 37% of security leaders believe they are tracking the right security metrics and can easily communicate them to executives and board members. This means the majority of organizations are struggling to bridge the gap between technical risk and business impact—leaving decision-makers either misinformed or disengaged.
Bridging the Gap Between Security and the Business
That mismatch rears its head in another classic example: scheduling a half-day tabletop exercise. A CFO or executive sponsor might ask, “We’re slammed—why on earth do we need four hours to walk through a hypothetical breach scenario?” The truth is, those four hours can save weeks of chaos if a real attack hits. But if I’m only talking about IP addresses, threat vectors, and how I’d configure the firewall in an emergency, I lose their attention. If I show them how a disorganized response could stall business operations or bleed millions in contractual penalties, they start clearing their calendars.
Yet, many organizations still fail to invest in proactive incident response planning. According to a report by the SANS Institute, 30% of organizations do not perform cyber-readiness exercises on a routine basis. Among those that do, 73.7% rely on penetration tests and tabletop exercises, while 71.7% conduct incident response testing. The disconnect is clear: while security teams recognize the value of these exercises, they often struggle to justify them in terms of business outcomes. The reality is, structured preparation significantly reduces financial losses and operational disruptions when an incident inevitably occurs.
The Untapped Value of Vendor Partnerships
Of course, bridging technical nuance and business objectives isn’t limited to internal audiences. Vendors can be an incredible resource if you treat them like strategic allies rather than transactional tool shops. I’ve had vendor reps flag potential issues before they ever reached my monitoring systems. Why? Because they trusted that I respected their product roadmap and wasn’t going to yank it out tomorrow for personal bias. It doesn’t matter how sophisticated a solution is if your security team won’t adopt it or the vendor feels kept in the dark about your future direction.
I sometimes describe my role as a “field CISO,” meaning I spend a lot of time in real situations, not just behind a desk. On any given day, I might be talking to engineers frustrated by a glut of false-positive alerts, sitting with finance teams who want a straightforward ROI on every security upgrade, or engaging with a vendor’s product manager about aligning to next year’s strategic priorities. Each of those audiences needs a different flavor of conversation. The engineers need to know that I care about their workflows, not just top-down mandates. The finance team expects me to explain how a patch or a new platform preserves the company’s revenue-generating capabilities. The vendor wants clarity on where they fit into the broader roadmap. If I insisted on hammering every point through a purely technical lens, all three of those conversations would fall flat.
When you do pull these threads together, something remarkable happens: security stops being a siloed function. I’ve watched CFOs shift from exasperation to genuine interest when I demonstrate how proactive threat hunting saves us from dealing with time-consuming, brand-damaging incident recoveries. I’ve seen security engineers become more motivated once they understand why certain vulnerabilities matter far more than others. And vendors lean in, offering more tailored support and exclusive previews of their upcoming features, because they know we’re aligning security decisions with real business needs.
The Real Role of a CISO
That’s why I say the “C” in CISO stands for a lot more than “Chief.” It stands for collaborator, communicator, and connector. Technical mastery will always be critical, but if you can’t convey its business significance, you’ll keep hitting a wall of executive apathy, team resentment, or vendor discord. Being able to speak the language of finance and operations—and bring that language back into the security trenches—is what ensures that the urgent complexities we deal with actually get addressed. It’s also why I haven’t touched a line of production code in years, yet I continue to gain trust from boards, CFOs, and front-line analysts. There’s immense value in someone who can see the next zero-day exploit coming, but there’s even greater value in someone who can rally the organization around addressing it. That, in my experience, is what being a CISO really means.