These strategic skills are highly transferable to broader roles like COO, according to McDonald. In the current role, for example, he must understand customer needs and be able to speak a common language with them. “CISOs need to talk to finance, HR, marketing [and] product to bring about change, alter the perspective of the security landscape with the organization or decrease the risk profile. These skills are highly transferable and position you very well to run any kind of operational team,” he says.

“Being a CISO, what you do day in, day out, is to think strategically across the business, not just in your lane. Making one change can impact the entire business and so you have to do a good job of influencing outside of your specific remit,” McDonald tells CSO.

Broad exposure to different verticals is beneficial for pivoting to roles like COO because it involves understanding different regulatory and compliance needs. “It helps to think in different ways, not just about the internal requirements, but how they translate into what a customer may need and start speaking in a different language and looking at your organization from both an external and internal aperture,” he says.