The Translation Gap: Why Boards and CISOs Talk Past Each Other
About This Episode
Jason Lee sits down with Antonio Bovoso, cybersecurity executive, founder of Consiro Advisory, and author of The Boardroom CISO, on the gap at the center of most board conversations about cyber: boards and CISOs are often on two different planes.
Finance and sales walk into the boardroom speaking the board's language. Security too often shows up with tactical metrics and worst-case scenarios for an audience whose job is to govern, not to operate. Antonio and Jason get into how to fix that: reframing risk as enablement, tying cyber to the way the business actually makes money, networking across the org to borrow the language that already works, cutting vanity metrics and the museum-quality deck, and where cyber liability really lands.
“I wish they understood how much we want to help them.”
Antonio Bovoso, Consiro Advisory
In This Episode
- 01Boards and CISOs lack a common language. Finance and sales arrive speaking the board's terms; cyber often shows up with tactical metrics for a governance audience.
- 02Reframe risk as enablement, not doom and gloom. Tie cybersecurity to the revenue and outcomes the business already cares about.
- 03Network sideways before you go up. Sit with other business leaders, learn their roadmaps, and borrow the language from their own board decks.
- 04Kill the vanity metrics and the museum-quality deck. Bring three to five slides, with one slide that carries the whole message even if you only get three minutes.
- 05Read the room. Body language tells you when you have lost the board, and liability is owned in layers, so document the recommendations you make.
About the Guest
Founder & Managing Principal · Consiro Advisory
Antonio Bovoso is a cybersecurity executive with roughly 25 years in the field, from desktop support through more than a decade in consulting (including time at Deloitte) to building a biotech security program from the ground up. He is the founder and managing principal of Consiro Advisory, where he advises biotech companies and cybersecurity startups, and the author of The Boardroom CISO, written to give CISOs the board-readiness playbook he wishes he had early in his career.
Get The Boardroom CISOFollow the Show
The Blind Spot
Cybersecurity conversations on what happens after the risk is visible. Subscribe so you do not miss an episode.