The security chair is becoming the top tech seat
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Welcome to this week’s edition of CIOsurge!
This week, we’re focusing more on vulnerabilities and security:
Tim Youngblood, the first CISO at Dell, on why the security chair is becoming the top technology seat
Cybersecurity is no longer the CISO's job alone as AI spreads across every function
The State of the CIO: the average tech chief now wears 1.6 executive hats
Let’s make this week a game-changer.
Stay sharp. Stay ahead.
The CISO Is Becoming the Top Technology Leader, Not Just the Head of Security
This week I sat down with Tim Youngblood, a genuine legend in our industry. Tim was the first security leader at Dell and went on to lead security at T-Mobile, McDonald's, and Kimberly-Clark. He now sits on three boards and invests in early-stage companies. When someone with that much road behind them tells you the role is changing, it is worth listening.
I asked Tim what he is watching for the next decade of tech. He went straight to the shifting shape of the CISO job. "I'm starting to see this switch and change in the role of the CISO to action, being at the seat of the table with the rest of the business," he said. Part of the reason is structural. "Thanks to AI, every company is a technology company now. And the board is starting to slowly change and reflect that too, bringing more technology leaders onto board seats, although it's not happening very quickly."
Then he named the shift that stopped me. "You're starting to see where you have CIOs reporting to CISOs now. I've started to see that in multiple industries. Or CISOs now being promoted into CTO." His logic is clean: once you have owned security, you already understand how the entire infrastructure and technology stack works, which puts you in a position to guide all of it.
The takeaway Tim left for security leaders is a challenge. "CISOs have to really build that muscle and be prepared for those opportunities to be the head technology leader, not just the head of security anymore."
I could not agree more, and it maps to what I keep telling our community. The leaders who will define the next wave are the ones who stopped treating security as a silo and started treating it as the vantage point from which you can run all of technology. If your ambition is the top technology seat, the security chair may be the best possible on-ramp, but only if you have built the business fluency to go with it.
Cybersecurity Is No Longer the CISO's Job Alone
CIO Dive reports that the spread of AI across the enterprise is breaking the traditional model where cybersecurity sat squarely with the CISO and IT. With HR using AI for hiring, finance running agents for procurement, and legal leaning on AI for contracts, security teams can no longer govern every decision in isolation. The emerging pattern is shared responsibility: a technology leader such as the CIO owns which AI models get used, the security team puts the controls in place, and people-focused teams like HR handle enforcement of policy violations. Deloitte found that the biggest challenge for tech executives is no longer control, but coordination of an organization's tech strategy, a shift underscored by the additional $6 billion enterprises are set to spend on AI models and agents in 2026.
This is the structural change behind everything Tim described. When security decisions are being made in every department, the CISO cannot be the lone gatekeeper, and the CIO cannot pretend AI risk is someone else's problem. The job becomes orchestration: setting the model policy, wiring in the controls, and getting HR, legal, and finance aligned on who enforces what. That is a leadership skill, not a technical one. The executives who learn to coordinate across the C-suite will run this. The ones still trying to personally approve every tool will be routed around.
— Zack Tembi
The State of the CIO: One Leader, 1.6 Jobs
CIO.com's 25th annual State of the CIO survey, covering 662 IT leaders and 249 line-of-business users, captures a role stretched across more territory than ever. The average CIO now juggles 1.6 positions, frequently absorbing chief security officer, CISO, and chief AI officer duties on top of the core job. Nearly half of respondents (46%) now view the CIO as a business leader who proactively identifies opportunities and aligns technology to them, and 83% see the CIO as a changemaker. Cyber and data security climbed as a top CEO priority, cited by a quarter of respondents, up from 20% a year ago, while IT leaders expect to expand their involvement in AI and machine learning (76%), agentic AI (70%), and cybersecurity (63%).
The 1.6 number is the whole story. The market is not creating three tidy roles for AI, security, and technology. It is piling all of it onto one leader and calling that leader a business executive. That is an opportunity if you have built the range to carry it, and a trap if you are still defined by a single technical lane. Pick the two or three areas where you can credibly own the business outcome, get fluent enough in the rest to govern it, and stop thinking of security, AI, and IT as separate jobs. Your board already sees them as one.
💡 CIO Spotlights
Rory Meleniclis named Chief Information Officer at Intact Insurance, Global Specialty Lines
Appointed CIO to lead the next phase of technology transformation across Intact's global specialty lines business, spanning core systems, cloud, and data-driven decision-making
Brings more than 20 years leading technology teams inside highly regulated financial institutions
Most recently held senior technology leadership roles at Royal Bank of Canada, running global teams across payments, data, and cybersecurity
Track record in cloud modernization and platform renewal, with an emphasis on using AI, machine learning, and data to sharpen performance and risk management
