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When pitching CISØ services, it’s best practice to give the prospective client all the info up front so they can make the best decision moving forward. That said, there’s value in distinguishing between CISO “roles” (strategic, technical, compliance, etc.) and CISO “models” (vCISO, CISOaaS, fractional, etc.).
This piece focuses on the former: CISO roles.
But this isn’t your typical Crypto Chateau article. It’s a drink order at the end of the world.
Armed with vendor lanyards, unwashed Yubikeys, and trauma-bonding over AWS misconfigurations, the modern CISO is a war criminal with a Zoom license. A digital shaman for a corporate religion they don’t believe in anymore. We exist to absorb the blast radius of underfunded IT initiatives, disguise failure in acronyms, and smile while being deposed by the FTC.
Yeah... let’s start there.
Every CISO you meet is living on borrowed time and institutional caffeine. Each one has chosen their poison: strategy, paranoia, policy, control, chaos. And you can always tell who you’re dealing with by how they order their coffee. You’ll know the moment they say, “extra hot, no room.”
The coffee never lies. It’s ritual. It’s signal. It’s the last honest metric in an industry built on controlled panic. You want to know what kind of CISO you’re dealing with? Don’t check their certs. Watch what they drink when it’s 3 a.m. and the logs won’t stop screaming.
And you can always tell who you’re dealing with by how they order their coffee. You’ll know the moment they say, “extra hot, no room.”
And no, we’re not talking real coffee. Not “sit at a Paris café and contemplate Aristotle and Kant” coffee.
We’re talking weapons-grade cold brew. Eight shots. A pump of synthetic accountability. A hint of vanilla-scented nihilism.
Read on.
Drink up.
And pray your CISO isn’t the one who orders a soy vanilla cold brew with a side of breach fatigue.
They speak fluent boardroom, wear Ferragamo loafers in solid calf suede (flat heel, apron tow, obv.), and translates business goals into security outcomes. He doesn’t care how your firewall works, but he does know how to get $4M in budget approved by a CFO who still uses Internet Explorer. They anchor security to growth, budget to vision, risk to ROI.
This guy hasn't touched a command line in ten years and doesn’t need to, because he can turn a breach into a brand opportunity and a zero-day into a keynote.
🔍 Focus: Long-term strategy, executive alignment, security as business enabler.
☕ Coffee Order: “Grande half-caf skinny vanilla latte extra hot with an extra shot-on the company card.”
😋 Flavor Profile: Burnt. Like the interns he emotionally eviscerates via Zoom.
🎭 Bonus Behavior: Will 100% say “thought leadership” unironically before noon.
Came up through engineering, lives in the stack, and isn’t afraid of a kernel panic. Runs on black coffee, paranoia, and a hatred of WAFs.
They’re not here to play politics. They’re here to keep your backbone intact. They don't “present.” They "execute."
Firewalls? Custom. Detection rules? Homegrown. And he knows which line of code just bricked your zero trust deployment.
Perfect for tech-driven organizations or those building security infrastructure from the ground up.
🔍 Focus: Secure architecture, encryption, zero trust, red/blue team leadership.
☕ Coffee Order: “Black drip. No sugar. No cream. Brewed at home.”
😋 Flavor Profile: Bitter, utilitarian, slightly paranoid.
🎭 Bonus Behavior: Talks to vendors exclusively in RFC numbers and passive aggression.
The legal buffer between your breach and your bankruptcy. If your business touches PHI, PCI, GDPR, or any acronym that keeps in-house council awake at night, this is your operator. They ensure your house is audit-ready and fully aligned with regulatory frameworks.
Their natural habitat is a 3-day Zoom with auditors. They will save you millions in fines and bury you in policy templates. Paperclip Maxxing is their aesthetic.
Fluent in acronyms and deeply concerned about the alignment of your policies with Subsection 42-F.
🔍 Focus: GRC, audit readiness, policy development, third-party risk.
☕ Coffee Order: “Venti Americano, 2.5 pump of vanilla. Lid triple-checked for secure closure.”
😋 Flavor Profile: Sweet, careful, drowning in documentation.
🎭 Bonus Behavior: Tells baristas about PCI-DSS while waiting for their drink.
Brought in to own a problem and solve it fast. Cloud security, data privacy, application hardening. These fractional or project-based leaders bring niche expertise without the full-time overhead.
They're the consultant you bring in when your DevOps lead accidentally ports your production data into an NFT smart contract. They show up when your cloud migration is six months late and your S3 bucket is public.
Like a plumber with a CISSP, they arrive, grunt, patch the pipe, send an invoice, and disappear into the fog of of LinkedIn endorsements.
🔍 Focus: Specific domains like cloud, SaaS, endpoint, or insider threat.
☕ Coffee Order: “Nitro cold brew. On tap. In a reusable flask. From a WeWork lobby in Berlin.”
😋 Flavor Profile: Hypercaffeinated nomad energy.
🎭 Bonus Behavior: Sends Slack messages from four time zones simultaneously.
Focused on execution and readiness. Keeps the SOC running, leads incident response, and ensures day-to-day operations are fast, coordinated, and proactive.
PTSD with a pager. Sleep deprived. Dreams in kill chains. Drinks straight from the Yubikey. Treats cyber threats like enemy combatants. Keeps incident response plans printed, laminated, and strapped to his thigh like a sidearm.
🔍 Focus: Operations, response playbooks, KPIs, team management.
☕ Coffee Order: “Espresso. Quad shot. No cup. Just pour it directly into their eyes.”
😋 Flavor Profile: Industrial-grade chaos juice.
🎭 Bonus Behavior: Uses caffeine pills like breath mints. Smells like MFA fatigue.
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