In the 2025 Annual State of Cybersecurity Report, risk management strategy has once again surfaced as the top priority for Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs). But why does this strategic focus remain at the forefront year after year, especially in an age flooded with AI innovations, automation, and sophisticated tooling?
While at Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit, we asked this to industry leaders, their take, the answer is complex, but rooted in a powerful convergence of personal accountability, organizational transformation, regulatory pressure, and ever-evolving threats.
From Job Risk to Personal Risk: The Accountability Era
“It's personal now,” says Dane Fiori, Founder & President of Guardare. “CISOs can be criminally charged. They’re realizing they could actually go to jail for ignoring key risks or failing to act on known threats.”
What was once a matter of professional performance has turned into one of personal preservation. CISOs are no longer just afraid of losing their jobs, they’re afraid of ending up in a courtroom. High-profile legal cases, regulatory crackdowns, and enforcement of executive liability laws are changing the calculus. As Fiori points out, the age of “check-the-box” compliance is over. If CISOs ignore red flags, skip over capabilities that could provide early warnings, or fail to implement proven controls, they could be held directly liable.
The Business Has Evolved and So Has the Risk
The modern enterprise looks very different than it did just five years ago, says Monzy Merza, Co-Founder, CEO of Crogl. “In 2020, a business user might have handled one unit of work. In 2025, thanks to AI, that same person is handling three to five units.”
This productivity explosion has created a scalable shadow risk: even though headcount hasn't changed, the effective workload, and the digital footprint, has tripled. Meanwhile, the number of tools in use has skyrocketed. Business users now deploy dozens of unsanctioned applications and integrations to accelerate their workflows, often outside the security team’s visibility.
This unregulated growth creates an exponentially larger surface area for breaches, misconfigurations, and insider risk. As Merza points out, “The net-new risk introduced by AI-fueled productivity is forcing CISOs to rethink risk management from the ground up.”
Regulatory Pressure Has Reached a Boiling Point
As technology evolves, so do laws. But laws don’t evolve fast enough.
Regulators, especially in the U.S. and Europe, are responding to new digital realities by shortening reporting windows and tightening enforcement. The SEC’s new rule mandating breach disclosure within four business days of determining materiality is a prime example.
“There’s new regulation coming and that’s fundamentally changing how CISOs work,” says Merza. “Reporting challenges, legal liability, and compliance obligations are now baked into the daily job. The price of getting it wrong is higher than ever.”
AI-Powered Threats Are Escalating Faster Than Defenses
“Risk is never done,” says Matt Covington, VP of Product, BlackCloak. “You never fully mitigate it. You just adapt as the threat landscape evolves.”
He highlights AI’s double-edged role: while organizations use AI to bolster defense, attackers use it to scale and automate deception. Deepfakes and synthetic identities have made classic social engineering tactics dramatically more potent and far cheaper to deploy. In a world where a fake CEO voice can authorize wire transfers, identity spoofing has become a top-tier risk vector.
CISOs now live in a cat-and-mouse cycle, racing to understand new forms of threat while trying to future-proof their organizations. That race demands a dynamic, living risk strategy, not a static policy.
The Cost of Ignorance: Financial and Reputational Risk
“Everything ultimately comes down to cost,” says Simon Wijckmans, Founder and CEO, c/side. “If something goes wrong, what does it cost: financially, reputationally, operationally?”
CISOs are now expected to have clear, defensible answers to questions like: What happens if we don’t fix this vulnerability? What’s the impact of not buying this tool? What’s the ROI of a mitigation effort versus the cost of a breach?
For a security executive, effective risk strategy isn’t just about visibility, it’s about financial foresight. Mapping technical risk to potential business impact helps security leaders justify investments and make decisions that support both security and the bottom line.
Strategy as Survival
Risk management isn’t just a practice, it’s a survival mechanism. The volume of threats, the speed of innovation, the scrutiny of regulators, and the real-world consequences for security leaders are all converging.
Today’s CISO must operate as a risk economist, a compliance strategist, a threat analyst, and a crisis manager all at once. And they must do so with unprecedented urgency and clarity.
In 2025, risk management is essential to staying in business and compliant.
