Cybersecurity: Are CSOs Giving Up the Fight?
Nearly 60% of CSOs say they may quit their profession entirely. How the onslaught of AI-aided attacks is overwhelming them.
There’s a crisis building in cybersecurity, and it has nothing to do with enterprise safety or defense vulnerabilities.
Not unlike the way frontline workers experienced emotional trauma and physical exhaustion during the pandemic, Chief Security Officers are being overwhelmed by the onslaught of cyberattacks brought on by AI. So much so, in fact, that a majority of CSOs are thinking about giving up the fight. In a new survey, half of them say they’re considering leaving their current roles. Even more concerning, nearly 60% are considering leaving the profession entirely.
It’s a shocking C-suite development that has gone under the radar. Kara Ruskin, a senior client partner in the Global Technology practice at Korn Ferry, says CSOs are suffering from two contradictory pressures: On the one hand, they’re burned out from trying to keep up with AI; on the other, they’re anxious that their failure to do so will eventually cost them their jobs. “Cyber warfare is shifting to a velocity that humans can’t keep up with,” she says. For the foreseeable future, she says, the threat to organizations and the risk profile for CSOs will be “brutal.”
The data on cyberattacks is indeed forbidding. In 2025, AI-enabled attacks increased by 89% year-over-year, with firms facing just shy of 2,000 per week on average. “It’s hard for CSOs to fortify systems to keep up with how AI has amplified the scale and speed of attacks,” says Ruskin. To be sure, one of the few ways firms can keep pace is by investing in AI to defend against attacks, but that approach exposes CSOs to the same type of job instability—in which their success is tied to the success of the technology—as executives in other functions.
Given all that, it’s no wonder that CSO turnover is skyrocketing. Data shows that 15% of CSOs changed employers last year, the highest turnover rate this decade. Tenure for the role averages around 24 months, or about two years fewer than other C-suite positions, and the number of firms with full-time CSOs fell to 63% from 76% since 2024. For firms, the flight risk of CSOs couldn’t come at a worse time. As Bryan Ackermann, Korn Ferry’s head of AI strategy and transformation, says, “It’s a dangerous place to have a leadership or talent hole right now.”
Still, Ackermann thinks firms could redefine and refortify their approach to cybersecurity. CSOs would seem to agree: Of those who are considering exiting the profession, one-third cited a lack of leadership commitment to cybersecurity. Ruskin notes that the CSO function is at an inflection point in which past success profiles and skill sets no longer work, and new ones have yet to be defined. For example, she says, many firms still have CSOs who were pulled into the function from governance or risk management. “That’s not going to work anymore,” she observes, adding that future CSOs will need a much deeper understanding of tech and AI, among other capabilities.
For his part, Ackermann believes that the motivations of future CSOs will be crucial to their efficacy and longevity in the role. “If half of CSOs want to leave the profession,” he says, “that means there’s another half who relish the challenge and are excited by the idea of participating in an arms race on the side of the good.”
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