For chief information security officers

You are asked to certify a recovery capability you have never been allowed to fully test.

The security seat carries a specific kind of exposure: you sign statements about resilience, third-party risk and incident readiness that rest on evidence somebody else controls. Peers who face the same signature are the only useful audience.

01Decisions

What CISOs bring to a table

Three that come up repeatedly. Yours does not have to be on this list — it has to be undecided.

  • Proving recovery rather than claiming it, when the board wants an RTO number
  • Splitting incident accountability with the CIO before an incident, not during one
  • Third-party concentration risk you can see but cannot unwind

Read what a table produced

02The room

Who you sit with

Format

Cross-functional Table

CISOs and CIOs together, deliberately — because most of these decisions fail at the seam between the two roles.

Cap

Eight seats

Never nine. No direct competitors, and never two people from the same company.

Rule

Chatham House

Never recorded. See the house rules and the trust centre.

All four table formats

Bring the decision you are carrying.

One paragraph. A person reads it within two business days.