Security Theater Is Over and Leadership Has Finally Entered the Chat

This week, Jeppesen ForeFlight announced the appointment of Ron Wood as Chief Information Security Officer. On the surface, it seems a standard leadership move, one more CISO appointment in a sea of cybersecurity headlines. But beneath that headline, I see something much more important. A signal that cybersecurity leadership is no longer just about defense, it’s now about direction.

It Seems The CISO Role Has Quietly Changed

For years, CISOs were expected to do three things exceptionally well. Keep attackers out, keep auditors satisfied, and keep incidents quiet. Today’s CISOs and SOC leaders are being asked different questions...

• How does security accelerate the business instead of slowing it down?

• How do we manage risk without killing innovation?

• What happens when security fails, and how resilient is the organization when it does?

This is especially true in industries like aviation, telecom, healthcare, and critical infrastructure, where downtime isn’t just inconvenient, it’s existential.

Security Is no longer a back-office function. Appointments like this reflect a broader trend I'm now seeing daily... security leaders being pulled closer to the core of the business. Not as a compliance checkbox, and not as the “department of no,” but as operators, advisors, and translators between technology, risk, and leadership.

I see modern security leaders sitting at the intersection of -->

• IT operations

• Incident response

• Regulatory exposure

• Customer trust

• Executive decision-making

If security leadership doesn’t understand how the business actually runs, security becomes theater.

Why I Believe This Matters to SOC and IT Leaders

This isn’t just a CISO story, it’s a SOC and IT leadership story. The SOC of today monitors business-critical systems, not just alerts. They respond to incidents that have legal, financial, and reputational impact. They Inform leadership in real time. And they act as an early-warning system for operational risk.

In many organizations, the SOC already functions as a strategic asset, even if the org chart hasn’t caught up yet. Leadership moves like this are the lagging indicator that the industry is finally acknowledging what security teams have been doing all along.

IMO, the most effective security leaders aren’t just excellent technologists. They are...

• Calm under pressure

• Fluent in risk, not just vulnerabilities

• Comfortable making imperfect decisions with incomplete data

• Trusted by both engineers and executives

When organizations elevate security leadership appropriately, it’s rarely about titles. It’s about recognizing that security is no longer something you “add on”, it’s something you build around. And when that shift happens, everyone...customers included... are better off.