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73% of U.S. CISOs Faced a Significant Cyber Incident in the Past Six Months, According to Nagomi Data

via Business Wire

The 2025 CISO Pressure Index Reveals Burnout, Blame, and Board Scrutiny are Changing the Reality of Security Leadership

Nagomi Security, the leader in proactive defense and continuous threat exposure management [CTEM], today released its 2025 CISO Pressure Index, revealing how widespread breaches and rising internal strain are reshaping the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) role. In just the past six months, 73% of U.S. CISOs reported a significant cyber incident. Yet the most consistent pressure isn’t coming from attackers, it’s coming from inside the organization. Eighty-seven percent of CISOs say pressure in their role has increased over the past year. Two-thirds report feeling burned out weekly or daily, and 40% considered leaving their role altogether.

Board expectations, shrinking resources, and tool fatigue are compounding the strain. Forty-four percent of CISOs say expectations from boards and executives are now their greatest source of stress, more than the threats themselves. Most oversee sprawling tool stacks, with 65% managing 20 or more security tools, yet 58% say incidents occurred even though those tools were in place. And as AI introduces new risks, it’s also becoming a cost-cutting directive: 82% of CISOs say they’re under pressure to reduce staff using AI. The result is a widening gap between responsibility and control.

“CISOs are managing nonstop risk with limited support and even less time,” said Emanuel Salmona, co-founder and CEO of Nagomi Security. “They’re expected to be strategic leaders and first responders all at once. The best way to support them is to share accountability across the business, make outcomes clearer, and give them the space to focus on what actually reduces risk.”

Nagomi’s 2025 CISO Pressure Index is based on a quantitative survey of 100 U.S.-based Chief Information Security Officers across major industries. The findings reveal where pressure is coming from and what needs to change to make the role more sustainable.

Key findings include:

  • CISOs face personal accountability: 17% say they always feel personally blamed for security incidents, regardless of root cause, and 39% say they often feel blamed — even when incidents fall outside their direct control. If a breach were to occur, 90% say their role may be at risk to some degree — including 20% who feel extremely at risk and 40% who feel moderately at risk.
  • Tool sprawl is eroding visibility and outcomes: 65% of CISOs manage 20 or more security tools, and within that group, 13% oversee 50 or more. More than half (56%) say their tools don’t integrate fully, and 57% report that half or fewer deliver measurable ROI.
  • AI is both the top threat and a cost-cutting directive: 59% cite agentic AI as their leading near-term threat, with nearly 20% of recent incidents already AI-related. At the same time, 82% face pressure from executives or boards to reduce staff through AI-driven automation.
  • Boards have become a dominant source of pressure: 44% rank board or executive expectations as their number-one stressor, surpassing external threats (33%). While 82% feel confident quantifying risk, 54% lack standardized, business-relevant metrics. Boards most often ask for risk-reduction trendlines (51%), quantified business impact (47%), and incident-response performance metrics (40%).

Nagomi is launching a new docuseries entitled Holding the Line, which features in-depth conversations with security leaders about the personal and professional toll of the role. The series dives into how the job is evolving, where pressure is coming from, and what needs to change. Nagomi will also host CISO mindfulness sessions in November and December, creating space for security leaders to connect, reflect, and discuss how the profession can move toward greater alignment, trust, and shared accountability across the enterprise.

To read the full 2025 CISO Pressure Index and learn how organizations can better support their security leaders and strengthen resilience, visit here.

About Nagomi Security

Nagomi Security gives enterprise security teams the control to eliminate exposure, faster and at scale. As the execution layer of Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM), Nagomi unifies asset visibility, contextual prioritization, remediation guidance, and performance reporting in a single platform. At its core is Exposure Lens, the only engine that correlates assets, controls, vulnerabilities, and threats to show risk in context across subsidiaries and business units. By validating defenses and directing fixes to the right owners, Nagomi ensures issues are resolved instead of tracked, closing exposures faster, strengthening defenses continuously, and delivering measurable progress for both security and business leaders. Recognized by Gartner® as a Cool Vendor, Nagomi is a pioneer in Automated Security Control Assessment (ASCA), helping organizations operationalize exposure management and drive down risk with the tools they already own.

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