362: Max Martina - Why CISOs Need Leadership, Not Just Authority

Today’s guest is Max Martina, President of Cambridge Leadership Associates. Max and Steve talk about why understanding human behavior is key to cyber resilience, leadership and authority, and the leadership challenges that come with remote and hybrid work. Max also shares his thoughts on how AI is impacting the day-to-day of the C-suite. 

Key Takeaways:

1. Security failures often begin long before a breach occurs.
2. Hybrid or remote workforces come with challenges both when it comes to managing teams, but also maintaining relationships on the executive level. 
3. When it comes to leadership, the human component is still necessary.

Tune in to hear more about:

1. How CISOs can learn to communicate effectively across all levels in the organization (2:46)
2. How CISOs best manage hybrid or remote teams (7:29)
3. How AI will affect the day-to-day work of the C-suite (14:23)

Standout Quotes:

1. “Part of what the CISOs have to do is actually engage stakeholders across all the levels of the business, including potentially in, in many cases the board.” - Max Martina
2. “Leadership is disappointing people at a rate that they can sustain.” - Max Martina
3. “One of the challenges that particularly confronts CISOs is that success is no breach. There's very little positive evidence that a CISO can report to and say, ‘See, look at this funding. It's been effective.’ Effective work by a CISO means that there are no security issues.” - Max Martina 
4. “Unfortunately, at least at this point, AI has not shown the ability to resolve competing commitments. It might provide directional analysis. It might provide insight that shapes strategy, but the competing commitments that exist in the fractions of the C-suite are frankly still human.” - Max Martina
5. “Just hitting your numbers is no longer sufficient. You have to build the adaptive capacity within an organization to respond to these complexities at a rate that we've never had to do before.” - Max Martina

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From the Information Security Forum, the leading authority on cyber, information security, and risk management.