Navigating Cyber Risk Without a Full-Time CISO

Thursday, November 20 2025

Navigating Cyber Risk Without a Full-Time CISO

4:00 PM - 5:30 PM ET | Virtual

Event Overview

Cybercrime has exploded into a $10.5 trillion global industry by 2025, growing at roughly 15% annually. Once thought to be a problem mainly for Fortune 500 firms, mid-sized businesses are now squarely in the crosshairs. Nearly half of all cyberattacks target small and mid-sized companies, and breach costs for these firms have grown nearly four times faster than for large enterprises in the last five years.

For CIOs and CTOs in highly regulated industries, the challenge is acute. You face enterprise-grade threats, tightening compliance standards, and rising customer demands—all without the resources of an enterprise security program or the leadership of a full-time CISO. The result is a growing leadership gap: cybersecurity responsibilities often fall to technology executives already tasked with driving digital transformation, managing budgets, and enabling growth.

This roundtable will bring together senior technology leaders to explore how mid-sized companies are tackling risk, compliance, and strategy without dedicated security executives.

Discussion will explore:

The biggest cybersecurity challenges keeping leaders up at night.
How compliance pressures are shaping priorities and investments.
Organizational models and resources being used to manage security.
Approaches to cybersecurity leadership in the absence of a full-time CISO

Request to Attend

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*Please note that this is an invitation-only event and space is limited. All requests to attend will be reviewed by our event staff and approved based on professional qualifications and event capacity. Additionally, these events will not be recorded and the Chatham House Rule will apply.

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Moderator

Chris Riotta

Managing Editor

ISMG

Sean D. Mack

Managing Director

CXO Advisor

Speakers

Join ISMG’s CXO Advisor team and your peers for a candid discussion on how to navigate cyber risk when a full-time CISO isn’t an option.

This session will be:

Chatham house rule
Peer driven
Pitch free

Subject matter expert

Dave Lewis

Global Advisory CISO

1Password

Dave has 30 years of industry experience. He has extensive experience in IT security operations and management. Dave is the Global Advisory CISO for 1Password. He is the founder of the security site Liquidmatrix Security Digest & podcast. He was a member of the board of directors for BSides Las Vegas for 8 years. Dave has previously worked in critical infrastructure for 9 years as well as for such as Duo Security,Akamai, Cisco, AMD and IBM. Previously he served on the board of directors for (ISC)2 as well as being a founder of the BSides Toronto conference. Dave was a DEF CON speaker operations goon for 13 years. Lewis also serves on the advisory board for the Black Hat Sector Security Conference in Canada and the CFP review board for 44CON in the UK. Dave has previously written columns for Forbes, CSO Online, Huffington Post, The Daily Swig and others. For fun he is a curator of small mammals (his kids) plays bass guitar, grills, is part owner of a whisky distillery and a soccer team.

Exclusive Sneak Peek: Get a Preview of this Roundtable

Venue

Toronto, Canada

Venue to be announced

Underwritten by

CXOAdvisor utilizes ISMG’s unique position at the center of the cybersecurity ecosystem, combining practical experience with near real-time threat intelligence, community insight, and workforce enablement.

Rules of Engagement

By taking part in this discussion you agree that:

These events follow Chatham House Rule. Nothing shared will be recorded or distributed anywhere online.
If for any reason you need to cancel your reservation, we ask you to let us know 48 hours prior to the event commencing so we can open your seat up to someone else.
These are interactive discussions, so we ask that all attendees participate in the discussion. If this is a virtual event, we ask all attendees to join via video.