CISO Media Consumption Habits: 2019 Q4

An In-Depth Research Study

A Record Quarter for CISO Engagement.

The evidence of evolving attack vectors by criminals and state-sponsored actors has dominated mainstream media coverage during the last three months of 2019. In tandem, the corresponding data from our digital and in-person events has shown a dramatic increase in engagement by the world’s top CISOs.

There’s no surprise our CISO interactions increased by almost an order of magnitude over the 3rd quarter of last year as we tracked more than 178,000 queries across our 30 media properties, analyzed 837 asset downloads and correlated the activities of 3,388 CISOs actively engaged in our network.

In this, our second issue of CISO Media Consumption, we will continue to explore the current and future state of cybersecurity, the key issues driving the shift in the C-suite and boardroom perception of cyber-risk, as well as add substantive analysis to what we believe are the most engaging topics in the space for the ultimate cyber decision maker: the CISO.

Key Data

Third-Party Risk Management is the most engaging content topic of the quarter.
44% of CISOs prefer White Papers
Digital Risk Management/ Cloud Security is the most engaging topic for in-person events
60% of the most active CISOs have surging intent on editorial topics dealing with Third-Party Risk Management

Chapter Preview

Time-frame – Achieving organization-wide threat awareness will be a top business priority in 2020.
Industry Breakdown – Despite increased phishing attacks, Healthcare remained around the prior quarter’s level at 5%.
Impending CISO Challenges – Misconfigured servers, email compromises, and insufficient attention to security hygiene fundamentals. In an era when anyone can claim to be anyone else on a network, identity access management has probably become the most important security control of all.
Company Size Breakdown – We breakdown all our company data-sets from 500+ Employees to 10,000+.
Network Overview – Our global digital network encompasses over 1 million security professionals
Activities Tracked – Email remains the channel of choice for CISOs.
Most Engaging Content Topics – Our analysis goes into depth on why, and how you can leverage this information.
Most Engaging Content Types – We’ve seen a growing appetite for long-form content this quarter. White papers are getting more detailed and hyper targeted to address very specific use cases serving information security persona interests. The power of content marketing allows CISOs to consume this research at their own time, place, and pace.
Top Content Pieces – With the recent controversy of law enforcement requesting backdoor access to iPhones, our top performing editorial piece on this subject was of great interest to CISOs.
Top Brand Engagement – Highest performing vendors are in the fields of network visibility and analytics, cloud security, and cyber risk management.
In-Person Events – CISOs are continuing to gravitate towards intimate, smaller, much more topically-focused events.
Crossing the In-person to Digital Divide – We discuss why it’s critical for vendors to provide a personalized one-to-one nurture regardless if the CISO is consuming content at in-person event or through a digital experience. and how to achieve this through strategic content repurposing.
Intent by Topic – Dive into our proprietary first-party data, also known as intent data is segmented by our marketing operations team.
Closing Thoughts and Looking Forward – Insights and guidance on what to look for in the next quarter.