This piece, drawing on insights from ISACA’s Chief Global Strategy Officer, argues that despite years of headline-making breaches, most boards still don’t grasp cyber risk well enough to steer investment decisions. Cyber incidents have ranked as the top global risk in the Allianz Commercial Risk Barometer for five straight years, yet a persistent gap remains between how prepared boards think they are and their actual readiness.
The core problem identified is translation: security leaders present technical findings, but boards need business-language framing (financial exposure, likelihood, mitigation cost) to justify meaningful investment. Without that translation, CEOs risk under-funding programs until a costly incident forces reactive spending instead of proactive planning.
For a CEO, the takeaway is structural rather than technical: readiness isn't fixed by buying more tools, it's fixed by changing how risk is reported upward. A CEO who insists on business-framed metrics from the CISO - not raw technical dashboards - closes much of the gap this article describes, and does so before a breach forces the conversation.