About CISO Platform
The world’s first online community dedicated exclusively to senior security executives.
What is CISO Platform?
CISO Platform is the world’s first online community dedicated exclusively to senior security executives, including CISOs, CIOs, and cybersecurity managers. The platform’s vision is simple yet powerful: enable senior security executives to share, learn, and network with their peers.
Founded in 2009, it has grown into a global community of senior security leaders across more than 20 countries.
- 6,000+ senior security executives
- 40,000+ subscribers
- 20+ countries
- 500+ frameworks & playbooks
It is not just about networking; it is about building checklists, frameworks, playbooks, and security guidelines that benefit the entire community.
Why it was built
Three places shaped the idea: Paris, Las Vegas and Goa.
Paris — the illusion of expertise
In an underground station on a drizzly day, a man offered our founder a newly released iPhone. He didn’t want it — he used a BlackBerry. The price kept falling. There was a story about a sister who needed money for medical care. Eventually it was an iPhone and a camera for €20, handed over in a brown paper bag. The seller walked quickly up the stairs. The bag contained two potatoes.
The detail that matters: our founder had performed stage magic in front of audiences of two and three thousand people. He knew palming techniques intimately. It happened anyway, in plain sight. Expertise is not the same as immunity.
Las Vegas — the power of sharing
At Defcon, hackers were openly sharing their secrets, their prototypes and their newest techniques. Freely, with each other, at scale.
Goa — networking without collaboration
At a CIO awards evening, senior leaders gathered for networking over good wine and good food. Dedicated CISO conferences did not exist yet — the role itself was only just emerging. There was conversation, but nothing was built.
Bad guys collaborate. Good guys network.
The attacker community was pooling knowledge and compounding it. Defenders worked in silos, each solving the same problems alone, each re-inventing the wheel, and each individually weaker than the highly collaborative community attacking them. Knowledge stayed isolated where it was created.
CISO Platform was built to close that gap: a private network where senior security executives share, learn and grow together, rather than simply meet.
What collaboration means here
Collaboration was given a deliberately specific definition: creating community goods.
Checklists. Frameworks. Best practices. Playbooks. Things that outlive the conversation and stay useful to people who were never in the room. The core idea was to create goods, not just to do networking.
One example. Nearly ten years ago, at a CISO Platform 100 Awards in Kochi, the community released the first community-created cyber crisis management framework for banks — built by the CISOs of the country’s major banks, for everyone. By coincidence, the RBI mandated exactly such a framework the same day. More than 500 checklists, frameworks and playbooks have followed.
Who is it for?
CISO Platform is for senior security professionals working in-house at the organisations they protect: CISOs, CIOs, CSOs, CTOs, security Directors and equivalent.
It is not a general practitioner forum, and it is not open to vendors, consultants or service providers.
Membership is free, subject to an approval process. Every application is reviewed, and the community is highly moderated — kept focused, and clean of spammers and non-aligned members. That restriction is the point: it is what keeps the discussion peer-level.
CISO Platform in North America
The community runs a continuous programme of recognition, research and peer exchange across North America — an annual awards summit in Atlanta, a daily breach intelligence brief, an ongoing interview series with sitting CISOs, and invite-only gatherings at RSAC and Black Hat.
CISO Platform 100 Awards & Future CISO Awards
Held in Atlanta at the Renaissance Atlanta Waverly across two days, 1–2 October. Nominations are free and open to self or peer nomination.
Judged by an independent panel including Bruce Schneier, security technologist; Jim Routh, former Head of Security at JP Morgan Chase; Anton Chuvakin, Office of the CISO at Google Cloud and former Gartner VP; Renee Guttmann, the first CISO at Coca-Cola; Dan Lohrmann, Field CISO for US Public Sector; Chris Ray, analyst at GigaOm; and Terry Cutler.
Recent honourees include Dr. Mauricio Angee (CISO, University of Miami and UHealth), David Cross (CISO, Atlassian), Dina Mathers (CISO, Carvana), Jack Freund, Assaf Keren, Nicole Dove, Tamika Bass, Raj Badhwar, Upendra Mardikar, John B. Sapp Jr., Kevin A. Novak, Dr. Erdal Ozkaya (CISO, Morgan State University) and Jason Meszaros (CISO, Anderson Trucking Service).
The awards began when there was no recognition for CISOs at all — CIOs were being celebrated and CISOs were not. That gap has since closed, and the vision has changed accordingly. The CISO Platform 100 now recognises the community’s top givers. We are not here to judge who is the better CISO. We are here to celebrate the people who give to the wider community.
Fireside Chats
An ongoing series of one-to-one conversations with sitting security leaders — more than 130 sessions published to date. A selection:
- Fireside Chat with Bruce Schneier Security technologist and author — CISO Platform Summit
- Practical AI in Cybersecurity Anton Chuvakin, Office of the CISO, Google Cloud
- The CISO’s Journey: From Expert to Leader David B. Cross, CISO, Oracle
- Cyber Insurance Strategies Every CISO Needs to Know Dan Bowden, Global CISO, Marsh McLennan
- A CISO’s Guide to Managing a Dynamic Attack Surface Rick Doten, VP Information Security, Centene
- Supply Chain Security Cassie Crossley, VP Supply Chain Security, Schneider Electric
- A CISO’s First 30 Days Mathew Ireland, CISO, NTT Research
Expert Panels
Multi-participant sessions on the problems that do not have a single answer — CISO liability, SEC disclosure, burnout, and the practical limits of AI in security.
- Cyber Insurance, CISO Liability and Legal Defense Jim Routh, Michael W. Reese, Matthew Rosenquist and Pritha Aash
- CISO Accountability and Transparency: Lessons from SolarWinds Matthew Rosenquist, Jim Routh and Michael W. Reese
- Balancing SEC Enforcement and Investor Transparency Jim Routh, Michael W. Reese and Matthew Rosenquist
- The Challenge of CISO Burnout Andy Ellis (Orca Security), Gary Bronson (Fortium Partners), Michael Seaman (Skopos Financial), Daniel Chechik (WalkMe)
- The CISO’s Role: Evolving Expectations Matthew Rosenquist, CISO, Mercury
Daily CISO Breach Report
A community intelligence brief published daily: high-signal incidents, CVEs to watch, detections to run, and a D0/D3 action plan. Built to be read in the morning and handed straight to your SOC. Recent editions have covered active exploitation of N-central RMM, ShinyHunters’ claimed breaches at EY and Brinks Home, Teams-based vishing delivering Chaos ransomware, and public exploits against self-hosted GitLab.
The CISO Platform Security Show
The community podcast, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and Podbean. Episodes cover emerging threats, security strategy and leadership, with guests drawn from sitting CISOs, researchers and authors across North America.
Peer Recommendations
Members asking members what actually works — tooling, vendors, architecture and process — answered by people who have deployed it, not by people selling it.
Executive Meetups
Invite-only gatherings timed to the North American security calendar.
- Community CISO Breakfast Roundtable, RSAC week Palace Hotel, San Francisco
- Executive Cocktail Reception, RSAC week Private yacht, San Francisco
- AI & Cybersecurity: Key Takeaways from RSAC Community field notes from the show floor
- CISO & Founder Breakfast, Black Hat Las Vegas
What members get
- Peer discussion with 6,000+ senior security executives across 20+ countries
- 500+ security frameworks, checklists, and playbooks
- The Daily CISO Breach Report
- Peer recommendations on tooling and architecture
- The Task Force Initiative, where members volunteer to lead community-wide research
- More than 130 fireside chats and expert panels with sitting security leaders
- The CISO Platform Security Show podcast
- Member-published blogs and research
- Executive breakfasts, roundtables and summits
- The CISO Platform 100 Awards
A note on our history
Before Gartner launched Peer Insights, the community built a product discovery and comparison platform — a taxonomy across more than 30 product categories, with over a thousand products mapped. It is no longer actively maintained, but it reflects how early the community was working on independent product evaluation.
Is CISO Platform independent of security vendors?
Membership is restricted to senior security professionals working in-house at the organisations they protect. Vendors, consultants and service providers cannot join the member community. That boundary is the primary safeguard.
Events are funded in part by sponsorship, and sponsors are named on each event page. Sponsorship buys presence at an event — a curated sponsor mix focused on quality introductions, not stage presentations. No stage pitches, no forced conversations.
Sponsorship does not buy membership, and it does not buy a place in community-created checklists, frameworks or playbooks.
Who founded CISO Platform?
CISO Platform was founded in 2009 by Bikash Barai, Priyanka Aash and Pritha Aash.
Bikash Barai founded the community and currently serves as an advisor. He is CEO of FireCompass, a separate company.
Priyanka Aash is Co-Founder of CISO Platform and Co-Founder of FireCompass. She has been nominated for the Cybersecurity Excellence Award for leadership and AI innovation in cybersecurity, honored with the NetApp Excellerate HER award, and featured in SC Media’s Women in IT Security series. She is the author of The AI Divide.
Pritha Aash is a co-founder and leads the community as Community Head.
CISO Platform and FireCompass are separate organisations. Where the two collaborate on an event or a session, it is disclosed on the page.
Frequently asked questions
- What is CISO Platform?
- CISO Platform is the world’s first online community dedicated exclusively to senior security executives, including CISOs, CIOs, and cybersecurity managers. Founded in 2009, it is a global community of 6,000+ senior security executives and 40,000+ subscribers across 20+ countries. Its vision is to enable senior security executives to share, learn, and network with their peers.
- Who can join CISO Platform?
- Membership is for senior security professionals working in-house at the organisations they protect — CISOs, CIOs, CSOs, CTOs, security Directors and equivalent. It is not open to vendors, consultants or service providers.
- Is CISO Platform free to join?
- Yes. Membership is free, subject to an approval process. Every application is reviewed to keep the community peer-level.
- Is CISO Platform independent of security vendors?
- Membership is restricted to senior security professionals working in-house at the organisations they protect, and vendors, consultants and service providers cannot join the member community. Events are funded in part by sponsorship, and sponsors are named on each event page. Sponsorship buys presence at an event; it does not buy membership, and it does not buy a place in community-created checklists, frameworks or playbooks.
- How is CISO Platform different from other cybersecurity communities?
- It is not just about networking; it is about building checklists, frameworks, playbooks, and security guidelines that benefit the entire community — more than 500 of them, contributed by members. The founding observation was that bad guys collaborate while good guys only network. The community is restricted to senior security executives and is highly moderated, so discussion stays peer-level rather than vendor-led.
- What does CISO Platform do in North America?
- CISO Platform runs the CISO Platform 100 Awards and Future CISO Awards in Atlanta, judged by an independent panel including Bruce Schneier, Jim Routh, Anton Chuvakin, Renee Guttmann and Dan Lohrmann. It publishes the Daily CISO Breach Report, runs a fireside chat series of more than 130 sessions with leaders including Bruce Schneier, Anton Chuvakin of Google Cloud, David B. Cross of Oracle, Dan Bowden of Marsh McLennan, Rick Doten of Centene and Cassie Crossley of Schneider Electric, hosts expert panels on CISO liability and SEC disclosure with Jim Routh and Matthew Rosenquist, produces the CISO Platform Security Show podcast, and convenes members during RSAC week in San Francisco and at Black Hat in Las Vegas.
- Who founded CISO Platform?
- CISO Platform was founded in 2009 by Bikash Barai, Priyanka Aash and Pritha Aash. Bikash Barai now serves as an advisor and is CEO of FireCompass, a separate company. Priyanka Aash is Co-Founder of both CISO Platform and FireCompass.
CISO Platform is all of you.