CISO Interview Questions

This is a collection of questions to ask about the team and the company when you're interviewing for a CISO position. I think most of them are also relevant for other security leadership roles. Please feel free to submit additions!

Company

• Does the company tolerate brilliant jerks?
• Is the company sometimes willing to make culture or engineering tradeoffs in favor of security?
• What is the company's risk management strategy?
• How are decisions made and communicated?
• How are priorities decided between teams?
• Does the company support community engagement, like speaking at conferences or contributing back to open source projects?
• Is the company willing to spend as needed, or is a lot of justification required?
• If there's a set security budget, what is it and what's the budget management process?

Team

• What is the team’s current make up in terms of seniority and expertise?
• Do they seem happy? Is anyone on the team likely to leave? Looking for growth that they can’t get here? Possibly upset by hiring externally for this role?
• What are the major projects you foresee for the security team?
• Is the team likely to grow and require hiring? Any missing skills that you can think of?
• Does the CISO have authority to fire poor performers as a last resort?
• How is security viewed by other teams?
• How would you describe the team's work/life balance?
• What is the ratio of reactive to proactive work?
• Is there an on-call rotation or is everyone on-call all the time?

Role

• Who does the CISO report to? Why?
• What is the envisioned scope of this role?
• Are priorities and incentives aligned between the CISO and upper management?
• If you could focus on the CISO role full-time yourself, what would you do? (Ask the hiring manager.)
• How do you gauge or measure success for this role?

Technical

• How important are firewalls to your security model? (Where are you on the spectrum between a hardend perimeter/soft middle and full zero trust?)
• What is the company’s approach to technical debt?
• What is the cloud strategy, assuming there is one?
• What does the tech stack look like at a high level? (Programming languages, operating systems, open source vs. commercial.)

Tactical

• How are IT support and operational responsibilities handled?
• What’s the travel policy? Do employees fly business class on longer trips?
• Do people get offices or is it an open space environment?
• What’s the vacation policy?
• How close to the office do most people live?
• Is working from home once in a while practical? What about fully remote work?