CISOs and CIOs forge vital partnerships for business success

Vikram Nafde, EVP and CIO, Webster Bank

Webster BankAs is the case at many companies, Webster Bank’s CISO Patty Voight reports into the CIO. While there is a direct line between the executive functions, Nafde says the structure is collaborative, not hierarchical, a significant evolution as the intensity of threats escalate, raising the bar for cybersecurity leadership. In 2024, the global average cost of a data center breach was $4.88 million, a 10% spike over the subsequent year and the highest on record, according to the Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024 published by IBM and Ponemon Institute. That report revealed it takes an average of 258 days for security teams to identify and contain such a data breach.With companies’ revenue, reputation, and resiliency on the line, cybersecurity leaders can no longer operate from technical silos, detached from day-to-day operational challenges and divorced from critical business goals. The breadth and complexity of the attack vector, coupled with an active and evolving regulatory landscape, have elevated cybersecurity to a key business priority and along with it, CISO executive status.According to the 2025 State of the CIO survey, upgrading IT and data security to reduce corporate risk ranked among the top CEO priorities for IT this year, cited by 20%. The research also found CISOs split evenly between reporting up to the CEO (37%) and into the CIO (36%); in 2024, nearly half (49%) of CISOs named the CIO as their direct superior.”Businesses are recognizing that cybersecurity needs to be prioritized and that it’s a global problem, not a matter of if, but when,” says Larry Whiteside, chief advisory officer for The CISO Society, a private community for cybersecurity leaders. There’s no such argument anymore that a company is too small to be in the crosshairs.”If you’re making money or have data, they will come after you,” Whiteside says. “You need to be thinking about potential business impacts and how to mitigate that risk as much as possible.”As CIOs morph into a multi-faceted business leader, it makes sense that CISOs follow suit, building the case for a more collaborative, business-focused partnership. “As the CIO becomes more of a consultant, working with the business to leverage technology, the CISO works alongside to build security into those strategies,” Whiteside adds. “CISOs are moving out from under the CIO and becoming a peer.”

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