How to Prepare for a CISO Interview | CISO Interview Questions

On this episode of Life of a CISO, I go through the steps you must take to prepare for your interview as a CISO. Remember, you may not get the job on the first try, but if you make it your goal to have 500 interviews, you will absolutely succeed. Here is what you need to know to ace the interview: If you want to be a world class CISO, you must own the interview by understanding the business, take control of the first 3 minutes, and speak the language of the executive. Also know what is the business, how do they make money, and what is their competitive advantage? Have a world class CISO mindset, not a security engineers mindset. Good luck out there!

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Show Notes:
0:15 How to do an interview
0:35 You don’t need a lot of experience because a CISO is a new position
2:55 When you get the interview, you need to own the first 5 minutes
3:28 What I do when I am interviewed on television
5:25 Prepare for an interview by finding out the financials of the company
7:13 What you are showing the interviewer on your first question
7:29 What not to say in an interview for a CISO position
8:25 How to be authentic
10:14 But don’t be the smartest person in the room. Check your ego at the door
11:09 Always know what is the company’s business and how do they make money?
13:49 The importance of being able to scale and shift quickly
17:03 How you know you don’t (yet) have the CISO mindset
17:36 What differentiates the business from the competition?
19:04 What can have the biggest impact on the business?
19:54 Security engineers make this mistake that a CISO doesn’t
20:31 Review

About Dr Eric Cole
Eric Cole, PhD, is an industry-recognized security expert with over 20 years of hands-on experience in consulting, training, and public speaking. As the founder and CEO of Secure Anchor Consulting, Dr. Cole focuses on helping customers prevent security breaches, detect network intrusions, and respond to advanced threats. In addition, he is a sought-after expert witness and a 2014 inductee to the InfoSecurity Hall of Fame.

#LifeOfaCISO #Cybersecurity #Careerpath

[call_me_tia]

Just started discovering your channel and I love it! It’s a huge help to prepare for the future CISO position! Thank you Eric! I totally support your message about business enabling and that so few people do understand it. As a consultant I‘ve met a lot of CISOs and they seldom cared about the business. As you said: they had a checklist of “bad things” and never cared about the context. It was much easier to say no because of security.

[sabotagehase]

This man is pure gold. I absolutely love it and get my further education next year.

[rokrdku]

Thank you Eric! Not my first CISO gig but I’ve always rolled up to CTO and could get away with tech jargon. Had an interview today with a CFO and thanks to this, I CRUSHED it! Have a couple more interviews to go but this method absolutely works!!!!

[kappatoflash]

This is the best channel on YouTube. I wished I have found it a long time ago. Thank you Dr. Eric!

[narendra]

This is absolute gold. Thanks so much Eric for such valuable insights. Excellent material🙏

[financiallife]

What about a non profit or government funded CISO role? What should you focus on there?

[TeamSmithLI]

Excellent info; great job representing Strong Island!

[TheThirdDictor]

Great video, but Eric, I think times have changed about the "not a lot of people with the experience" part. There are thousands upon thousands of security professionals out there at the senior manager and director levels, who are looking to step up into the CISO role. Your analogy is spot on about "Can you fly that plane?" And just like in aviation where EVERYTHING is based on "how many hours do you have flying that plane already?", so it is for a CISO role. If a person doesn't have at least 15 years of experience in infosec, including progressive roles up from analyst, through engineer, through manager, through director? You really don't have a shot at becoming a CISO. Why would you? Why would I trust my company's existence to somebody who has not shown a history of getting it done at very senior levels before?

[Vic-dlwq]

Great content Dr. Cole! I've heard you talk about assessing the impact to the business multiple times. It sounds like primarily from a financial perspective. I would love to hear you go deeper on assessing impact on a podcast. I have been looking into CIS RAM which talks about the impact to mission, objectives, and obligations. I know different frameworks use different languages to think about these things. I would love to hear more about how you think about this. Thanks!

[ayoubmchaar]

What a wonderful channel 🫡🫡🫡
You are talking gold and sharing both information and Mindset. Very helpful thanks a lot

[anfalshaikh]

Hi Eric, i want to enroll your ciso certification and need you know about the course .. trying to reach you but no luck could you please share the details with me