The CISO Must Die
The Chief Information Security Officer is a corpse, animated only by bureaucracy. A relic of a world where security was a department, not a foundation.
The CISO does not protect, does not build, does not secure. They exist as a buffer.
An executive to absorb blame when leadership fails to take security seriously. A corporate scarecrow standing in the way of real defense.
This role was never about security. It was about optics. Boards wanted a name on a slide, a figurehead to point to when auditors asked about risk management. The CISO became a box to check, a bureaucratic ornament meant to reassure investors rather than repel attackers.
Meanwhile, real threats evolved.
Cybercriminals automated their exploits, AI-powered attacks began outpacing defenses, and security became an engineering problem. One that could not be solved by a single executive locked in board meetings.
CISOs do not own security. They do not control budgets, do not command infrastructure, do not dictate architecture.
Their mandate is diluted by legal teams, overridden by business priorities, and ignored by those who hold real power. Security must move at the speed of threat actors, yet the CISO remains trapped in slow, approval-based governance structures designed for a world that no longer exists. They operate in a defensive posture, mitigating risk on paper while adversaries move in real-time.
They do not stop breaches. They fill out reports explaining why breaches were “unavoidable.”
The best security professionals do not become CISOs. They do not waste their time in executive silos, fighting for budgets they will never receive. The real defenders are in the trenches - building resilient systems, designing secure architectures, automating threat detection. They are engineers, not politicians.
The fact that top security minds avoid the CISO title should be a death sentence for the role itself.
Security today is not a function. It is not a department. It is not an isolated discipline that can be handed off to a single executive. It is an embedded necessity, woven into every layer of an organization’s infrastructure, product development, and strategic vision.
The idea that a single figurehead can “own” security is as absurd as hiring a Chief Breathing Officer to ensure employees keep inhaling oxygen.
It is not a job. It is a condition of survival.
Organizations that still rely on a CISO have already lost. The strongest companies do not have a security department; they have security as a foundation.
Their engineers write secure code.
Their leadership treats security as a business driver, not an afterthought.
Their operations teams build automation into detection and response.
They move faster than attackers because they are structured for speed, not bottlenecked by an executive whose primary function is risk mitigation theater.
The CISO is not just unnecessary. They are a liability.
They create the illusion that security is handled, that risk is controlled, that leadership can look the other way because one person, drowning in bureaucracy, will somehow hold the line. It is a lie that makes organizations weaker, not stronger.
This role does not need reform. It needs elimination. Organizations that cling to it will remain vulnerable, blind to the reality that security is no longer an isolated responsibility. It is a total operational imperative, one that cannot be owned, delegated, or outsourced to a powerless executive.
The CISO must die. The future of security demands it.
The survival of companies depends on it. Keeping the role alive is not just incompetence. It is a failure that guarantees collapse.
Those who refuse to evolve will not just lose security. They will lose everything.