Survey: CISOs Continue to Struggle to Strike Right Risk Balance
Security Boulevard, Monday, March 9th, 2026
A survey of 422 CISOs finds that while well over half (61%) believe their organizations are highly competent when it comes to cybersecurity and cyber resilience, less than half (45%) said their organization's risk appetite is effectively aligned with cybersecurity risk management even though 57% claimed their communications channels with the line of business units are effective.
Conducted by LevelBlue, a provider of managed security services, the survey also finds only 53% of respondents feel their organization is prepared to defend against adversaries that are enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) and even fewer (37%) said cybersecurity budgets are embedded into projects from the start.
LevelBlue CISO Kory Daniels said the results suggest there is still a significant gap between an organization's ability to secure emerging technologies such as AI prior to it being embedded within business workflows. The issue with AI is that the pace of adoption is already faster than any previous class of emerging technologies, he added.