What is CISO Talents? The verified network for CISO talent

What CISO talent means

CISO talent is the pool of people who can lead a security programme: chief information security officers, virtual or fractional CISOs (vCISOs), heads of security and deputy CISOs. It also covers the specialists who work with them, such as penetration testers, cloud security engineers and governance, risk and compliance (GRC) leads.

That talent is hard to find. In the ISC2 2025 Cybersecurity Workforce Study of 16,029 security professionals, 59% reported critical or significant skills needs on their teams, up from 44% a year earlier. The most common reason was not being able to find people with the right skills (30%), just ahead of a lack of budget to hire (29%).

Why companies need CISO talent now

Regulators increasingly name the role or the responsibility behind it:

• New York's cybersecurity regulation (23 NYCRR Part 500) requires covered financial companies to designate a CISO, who may work for an affiliate or a third-party service provider
• The EU's NIS2 Directive makes management bodies approve and oversee cybersecurity risk-management measures, and lets them be held liable for failures
• The US SEC's 2023 cybersecurity disclosure rules ask listed companies to describe which managers are responsible for cybersecurity risk and what expertise they have

Who CISO Talents is for

• Companies hiring a CISO, vCISO or security specialist, or buying security work from a firm
• CISOs, vCISOs and heads of security looking for a new role or for peers
• Security professionals, such as penetration testers, cloud security engineers and GRC analysts
• Independent consultants and cyber security firms, including MSSPs, consultancies and vCISO practices, that want scoped requests from companies

What you can do on CISO Talents

• Post a job for a permanent role. Every job post shows its salary range.
• Post a scoped request for project work through a guided brief: a fractional or virtual CISO, a penetration test, ISO 27001 or SOC 2 readiness, or NIS2 or DORA readiness
• Get replies in the same format from matched experts and firms, each with the reason it matched, so price, deliverables and timeline are easy to compare
• Search a directory of verified experts and firms by framework, region, availability and verification level
• Talk with verified peers in Spaces such as CISO Leadership, vCISO Practice and NIS2 and DORA, under your name or a handle with a role label

How verification works

Fake profiles are a growing hiring risk: Gartner predicts that by 2028, one in four candidate profiles worldwide will be fake. CISO Talents verifies facts with evidence and shows the date of each check:

• Work email at a company domain
• Certifications such as CISSP and CISM, CVE credits and bug-bounty profiles
• Verified Leader: our team reviews the CISO, vCISO or head of security role
• Verified Firm: our team checks the business registry and the company domain

A badge confirms facts, not skill

Every badge reads "Facts checked on" and a date, and says it is not a guarantee of competence. A badge tells a company that a person holds the role and credentials they claim. Judging how good they are is still the company's job, through interviews, references and the proposal itself.

Stealth: look for a role without your employer knowing

Many CISOs can't be seen looking for a new job. With Stealth on, your profile is hidden in every search from your employer's email domain and from organisations you block. Companies see an anonymous card, such as "CISO, fintech, EU", and nothing about you is shared until you accept an intro. Stealth can't hide posts you write under your own name.

What CISO Talents is not

CISO Talents doesn't place candidates, run executive searches or sell security services. Companies and experts agree the work and the contract between themselves. Security product vendors can't use the community, the directory, messages, requests or jobs, so members aren't pitched by vendors.

When CISO Talents opens

CISO Talents opens in late November 2026. Experts and firms get invites first, so companies find verified people from day one. Join the waitlist and we will email you when we open.