For many organizations faced with an abrupt, urgent need to send their workforce to be productive from home in 2020, the CISO and their team became unlikely – or perhaps overdue – heroes.

Cyber stopped being 'just' about preventing bad things: cyber security has helped companies survive, sometimes even thrive, by equipping their organizations with the tools needed to stay productive under extraordinary conditions.

In mid-2020, F-Secure Countercept asked Omnisperience to talk to CISOs around the world about their roles. What follows – the output of these conversations – is an unfiltered response direct from 28 senior information security officers in the US, UK and Europe.

Each respondent took part in a lengthy qualitative interview covering their challenges, hopes, fears and plans. The insights they freely shared paint a portrait of a group of experts getting to grips with immediate problems – and coming to terms with the rapid development of a role that is only 27 years old.