Firefighting to future building: How CISOs can lead strategically in the year ahead

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Firefighting is part of the job for cybersecurity leaders — and there’s always another blaze to battle. With Microsoft’s latest Digital Defense Report citing its global cybersecurity infrastructure blocks 4.5M net new malware files daily, today’s threat landscape continues to demand constant vigilance and rapid response from cyber teams.

However, when “keeping the lights on” (KTLO) and tactical urgency become the default operating mode for cyber leaders, it limits CISOs professionally and organizations strategically. Leaders buried in alerts, technical readouts, reports, and tactical metrics often lose sight of broader priorities as they combat overwhelming data and alert fatigue. Recent studies underscore the need for CISOs to step out of the weeds too, with burnout rates reaching as high as 76%.

While daily check-ins with operational KPIs provide valuable visibility, they can also tether leaders to the tactical layer. To evolve from operational and reactive responders to strategic and proactive enablers, CISOs need a broader toolkit — one that links cybersecurity strategy to the organization’s financial performance.

Define and defend what keeps the business running

Like the threat landscape, the CISO role has shifted over time. While its origin revolved around safeguarding information assets, now the job stewards enterprise risk decisions and enables organizational resiliency. Today, CISOs are charged with protecting revenue and reputation, defending against financial and legal losses, and maintaining customer trust — all within an unpredictable security ecosytem.

It makes sense, then, that this role must be inherently strategic — requiring a focused commitment to identifying and protecting the business assets and capabilities that drive financial performance. In reality, CISOs must be as knowledgeable about their organization’s bottom line as they are about the performance of their cybersecurity program.

Aligning cybersecurity efforts with your organization’s financial drivers starts with answering five foundational questions.

1. What are the business-critical capabilities, assets, and operations?

Identify the systems, data, people, processes, technologies, suppliers, and partners that are essential to keeping the business running.

Ask yourself:

Which business capabilities and value streams, if disrupted, could halt operations or cause significant financial or reputational damage? Picture your organization as a wooden block tower — identify the one block whose removal would collapse the entire structure.

Industry scenario:

For a pharmaceutical company reliant on cold-chain logistics, refrigerated warehouses are mission critical. A cyberattack on warehouse control systems could compromise temperature regulation, leading to product spoilage and millions in financial losses. A CISO at this organization must prioritize protecting these localized, high-value capabilities as a core component of their overall cyber strategy.

How Stratascale can help:

Starting with a review of your organization’s exposed vulnerabilities can uncover disconnects and help you build alignment with the rest of the business — before a crisis forces the conversation. Leading organizations choose Stratascale’s Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) offering to more efficiently manage IT/OT vulnerability exposure and prioritize required remediation efforts.

2. Where is the value concentrated?

Understand where your organization’s true value lies before defining your security strategy and prioritizing investments and resources.

Ask yourself:

Do we have an inventory of our capabilities and assets, along with a process to manage, monitor, and ensure visibility? Is our organization’s value rooted in intellectual property, customer data, platform reliability and stability, product quality, supplier dependency, physical assets, operational availability, brand trust, or a combination?

Industry scenario:

For a global online retailer, AI-supported personalized shopping experiences support customer trust and seamless transaction processing. Since this function is core to revenue generation, a breach affecting payment systems or AI models handling sensitive customer data could result in immediate financial losses, regulatory penalties, and long-term reputational damage. A CISO for this organization must understand the supporting infrastructure and services (and their dependencies) that enable these business operations, and build a strategy (including AI-powered fraud detection) that directly secures, protects, and defends the business’s financial engine.

How SHI can help:

SHI understands the cybersecurity implications of infrastructure decisions in the age of AI. One way SHI helps customers reduce fraud exposure is through effective Customer Identity Access Management (CIAM) solutions. Beyond security, we ensure organizations are truly ‘AI ready’ by leveraging our AI Readiness Assessment and AI & Cyber Labs for testing validation before major investments. The result? AI initiatives that protect your organization’s bottom line, instead of creating more risk.

3. How effective are we at protecting those assets?

Continually assess the maturity of your security program and overall security posture.

Ask yourself:

Are our protections proportionate to the value and risk associated with the asset? Are there gaps in visibility, operational resilience, or control coverage effectiveness?

Industry scenario:

For a regional healthcare provider, patient data stored in electronic health record (EHR) systems is among the organization’s most sensitive and regulated assets. If access controls, encryption, or audit logging are misconfigured or outdated, the organization risks Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance violations and reputational damage. A CISO in this organization must collaborate with the Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO), Chief Medical Officer (CMO), and other key stakeholders to ensure protections are not only implemented but also actively monitored and tested. Gaps — such as legacy systems lacking multi-factor authentication (MFA) or third-party integrations bypassing core safeguards — must be prioritized and remediated to align security controls with regulatory and financial risk.

How SHI can help:

When it comes to identity and access management (IAM), the question isn’t “What’s vulnerable?” — it’s “Which vulnerabilities truly threaten the business?” Our Identity Maturity Workshop is built to determine your organization’s level within each major IAM pillar across lifecycle and governance, authentication, privileged access, cloud identity management, customer identity, and identity threat detection.

4. Where are the significant vulnerabilities and risks?

Focus on vulnerabilities and risks that could disrupt core business capabilities and value streams, causing financial impact to the organization.

Ask yourself:

Which vulnerabilites or threats could directly impact revenue, funding, or compliance? What is the associated risk and exposure? Are mitigation efforts prioritized based on critical assets and capabilities aligned with business impact and not just technical severity? Do I have enterprise-wide visibility, including authenticated scans?

Industry scenario:

For a national logistics company, real-time fleet tracking and routing systems are essential for meeting delivery service level agreements (SLAs) and maintaining customer trust. If a ransomware attack were to disable global positioning system (GPS) tracking or dispatch software, it could cause operational disruptions that delay shipments, breach contracts, incur reputational damage, and trigger potential revenue loss due to financial penalties. A CISO at this organization must understand how strategic mitigation fits into the bigger picture. Vulnerability management tactics may include segmenting critical systems, implementing robust backup protocols, and ensuring rapid failover capabilities to preserve service continuity.

How Stratascale can help:

For CISOs looking to align cyber operations to business strategy, Stratascale’s Cybersecurity Controls Assessment is a great starting point. The assessment goes beyond compliance to deliver actionable insights that drive the creation of a strategic posture improvement roadmap. It also produces executive-level reports you can share across the business.

5. How prepared are we and what’s our plan if something bad happens?

Ensure there is a documented and continually-tested strategy that is scalable and adaptable for protecting business-critical assets and capabilities, responding to incidents, and enabling rapid recovery.

Ask yourself:

Do our incident response and business continuity management plans account for annual loss expectancy (ALE), other financial loss scenarios, regulatory requirements, and coordinated communications (across legal, finance, internal and external communications, operations, and external stakeholders) to minimize business disruption and reputational damage? Is there clarity on roles, responsibilities, incident classification and severity, escalation paths, communications channels, and authority for decision-making during an incident?

Industry scenario:

For a regional energy provider, real-time grid management systems are essential to maintain power distribution and public safety. If a cyberattack were to disable control systems or corrupt operational data, the impact could cascade across entire communities. A CISO at this organization must ensure there is a robust incident response plan that includes rapid isolation protocols, backup restoration procedures, and coordinated communication with legal, regulatory, and public affairs teams. Without a tested recovery strategy, even a short disruption could result in fines, lawsuits, and long-term reputational damage.

How SHI and Stratascale can help:

Our Business Continuity Workshop delivered by SHI experts empowers organizations to move from manual, reactive incident response to automated, scalable, and coordinated defense and response — helping minimize downtime, avoid costly disruptions, and protect revenue streams. Additionally, Stratascale’s executive tabletop exercises (TTXs) engage professional facilitators to help your executive team rehearse their tailored response in the event of a data breach, ensuring operational resilience and coordinated organizational response.

Building strategic cybersecurity, from tactics to transformation

While the fires of the cybersecurity world will never be fully extinguished, CISOs who can manage daily crises while building for the future will have the greatest impact. By shifting from tactical urgency to strategic focus — aligning cybersecurity initiatives with financial priorities and core business objectives — CISOs can transform their role from reactive problem-solvers to proactive business enablers.

Those who step back, ask the right questions, and safeguard the capabilities and assets that drive performance will position cybersecurity as a catalyst for organizational success. Amid an evolving threat landscape, one thing is certain: whether it’s a CTEM offering, CIAM solution, AI Readiness Assessment, Identity Maturity Workshop, Cybersecurity Controls Assessment, Business Continuity Workshop, or TTX, SHI and Stratascale are here to help you move from fighting fires to shaping the future.

NEXT STEPS

Ready to shift from firefighting to future building? Connect with one of our cybersecurity experts to discuss which of the five questions above represents your biggest gap, scope the challenge, and outline practical next steps.

Both Ben and Joseph regularly lead sessions as a part of SHI’s cybersecurity summits and executive briefing events. They’ve worked 1:1 with CISOs and cyber teams around the country to reduce their overall cyber risk and improve strategic practices.