Research Summary: Dual-Fit Imperative in Security Leadership: A Grounded Theory Investigation of CISO Role Enactment in Modern Organisations

The Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) role has become strategically significant, operating within a challenging environment marked by persistent threats, inherent conflicts between security and business objectives, and a 'prevention paradox' where successful security measures often go unnoticed by those allocating resources. Current academic understanding of how CISOs enact their role across diverse organizational settings is limited, leading to a lack of empirical foundation for best practices. This research aims to address this gap by investigating CISO role enactment through a grounded theory approach, based on interviews with Australian security executives.

Why it matters

The effective performance of the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) is critical for organizational resilience and strategic success in an increasingly adversarial digital landscape. Understanding how this role is enacted across varied contexts is essential for optimizing security governance and ensuring alignment with broader business objectives. Addressing the identified tensions and paradoxes will contribute to more effective resource allocation and stronger security postures.

Key insights

• The CISO role is strategically prominent within modern organizations.
• CISOs confront an adversarial environment, necessitating constant vigilance.
• There are irreconcilable accountability tensions between security imperatives and business enablement goals.
• A 'prevention paradox' exists where the success of security efforts often remains invisible to resource allocators, hindering further investment.
• Scholarly understanding of CISO role enactment across different organizational contexts is virtually absent.
• The study uses a constructivist grounded theory approach with abductive reasoning and the Gioia method.
• Research is based on twenty interviews with Australian security executives to understand CISO role enactment.

Source

arXiv — Computers and Society — https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.35887