Every CISO advice column says the same thing: "Learn to speak business." This advice isn't wrong. It's incomplete.
When 79% of security leaders feel pressured to understate risks, the problem isn't presentation skills. It's that CISOs are translating into a language they were never trained to speak.
The gap isn't communication skills. It's the absence of a translation framework.
Your CFO thinks in ROI and cost avoidance. Your COO thinks in uptime and process efficiency. Your CEO thinks in competitive positioning and market risk. Telling a CISO to "translate security into business terms" is like saying "translate English into European." Which one?
The Trend Micro 2024 CISO Credibility Gap report shows this failure has consequences:
Non-technical leadership speaks three dialects. Identify which dominates your leadership, then translate accordingly:
Security version: "Our SSPM monitors 47 applications with policy rules, but we've identified 265 additional applications outside our detection perimeter with potential misconfigurations."
Translated version: "We see 15% of what employees actually use. Three active AI incidents are happening right now in apps we can't monitor."
Translation difficulty compounds with organizational distance. CISOs reporting directly to CEOs nearly tripled last year (5% to 14%). But 60% still sit two or more levels below. Every layer filters and distorts your message.
Your job isn't just translating for the board. It's ensuring your translation survives intermediate translations. Give your CIO the translated version, not the security version. Make it easy to relay accurately.
Your security expertise isn't the problem. Your translation framework is. Stop presenting vulnerabilities, start presenting dollars at risk. Stop reporting detection metrics, start reporting business disruption prevented. Stop explaining security architecture, start showing competitive advantage enabled.
The 14% of CISOs who report directly to CEOs got there by becoming fluent in business language. The other 86% are still waiting for someone to translate for them.
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Gal is the Cofounder & CPO of Reco. Gal is a former Lieutenant Colonel in the Israeli Prime Minister's Office. He is a tech enthusiast, with a background of Security Researcher and Hacker. Gal has led teams in multiple cybersecurity areas with an expertise in the human element.
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