This blog aims to give CISOs important information they need to implement cybersecurity principles and focus domains at their companies. It is designed to be useful to a new executive with no CISO position experience and to a seasoned CISO familiar with the nuances of the security world. At its core, the blog is a collection of resources illuminating the many facets of the cybersecurity challenge and the related issues and opportunities of information security and risk management. The next sections mainly focused on the CISO roadmap, risky areas, and their solutions.

If you are a world-class CISO or you want to be, you need to focus on Business agility calls for adaptive enterprise architecture principles that require sound strategic security principles to enable secure progress and innovations. Thus, the CISO roadmap will focus on addressing evolving cyber threats and the changing digital landscape. This roadmap provides insight into our existing security challenges and looks ahead to emerging information security threats to formulate strategic security principles aligned with our business strategy.

Here are some key priorities:

What are you going to do?
What need to do?

The CISO Roadmap focuses on using business drivers to guide information security activities and considers security processes as part of the organization’s risk management processes. 

The overall objective of this roadmap is to;

• Establish direction toward your company’s information security in line with the business and applicable regulatory requirements.
• Elevate the information security maturity across the company.
• Ensure an effective information security management framework within the company with clear roles and responsibilities and formalize information security governance.
• Prescribe mandatory controls to enforce information security management to protect and maintain the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of assets.
• Provide a framework for technology-related security standards and their associated policies.
• Enable and sustain a secure ecosystem for the business units, customers, and partners to operate and grow.
• Ensure that information stored and processed on the company’s behalf by a Third Party (Vendors) is appropriately protected.
• Ensure that the security objectives and business objectives of the company are achieved through efficient management of information security risk in the company.

The CISO Roadmap – A Shift from Protection to Enablement

To lead effectively, today’s CISOs must align security with agility, innovation, and digital growth. The role now demands:

• Enterprise-level adaptability
• Strategic security architecture
• Alignment with business goals and compliance expectations
• Ownership of risk across people, processes, and platforms

A solid information security program is an essential component of running a business in the digital age a time when the number of data breaches and security incidents is increasing exponentially. Without a security program, you leave your company, customers, and data at risk. Let’s explore the components of an information security program, and walk through a step-by-step guide on how to implement the company.

1. Build an Information Security Organization

Before you begin this journey, the first step in information security is to decide who needs a seat at the table. One side of the table holds the executive team, made up of senior-level associates responsible for crafting the mission and goals of the security program, setting security policies, risk limitations, and more. On the other side of the table sits the group of individuals responsible for daily security operations. As a whole, this group designs and builds the framework of the security program.

2. Explore the Inventory and Investments

The security team’s first job is to understand which assets exist and where those assets are located, ensure the assets are tracked, and secure them properly. In other words, it’s time to conduct an inventory of everything that could contain sensitive data, from hardware and devices to applications (both internally and third-party developed) to databases, shared folders, and more. And then, we have to build a budget and proper security investments.

3. Conduct A Security Risk Assessment

Risk does not exist uniformly throughout an organization. Every business has critical processes and assets essential to its operations. The goal of conducting a security risk assessment is to identify critical processes and assets and assess the contextual risk of each. This map of contextual risk is used in subsequent stages of the cyber security program development process to allocate resources and develop appropriate security policies and controls that ensure operational resilience.

4. Select a Framework and Develop a Security Strategy

A cyber security program is a continuous and iterative process. A cyber security strategy is a formalized plan or roadmap that establishes a baseline for a company’s security program and plans activities over the next 2-3 years.

After an organization has conducted a risk assessment, it can select the most appropriate cyber security framework to mitigate cyber risk in concordance with the findings of the risk assessment. The cyber security framework will serve as an advisory for best practices during the design and implementation of policies and controls.

Common cyber security standards are:

• • ISO-27001 / ISO-27002
• • NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF)
• • Information Security Forum (ISF) (that is my best choice)

5. Create Security Policies and Controls

Policies and controls help to define the standard operating procedures that will ultimately ensure that the IT security best practices of the selected cyber security framework are applied and remain active. The most fundamental way to describe the key function of IT security policies and controls is to protect the:

• Confidentiality – Data cannot be accessed by unauthorized individuals or systems.
• Integrity – Data cannot be modified by unauthorized individuals or systems.
• Availability – Systems that are always online can be accessed when they are needed, of data-at-rest.

Protecting these critical elements should include administrative, technical, and physical policies and controls, which are designed to detect, prevent, and recover from all incidents that could otherwise negatively impact the organization’s IT infrastructure and business operations.

Summary of list:

The next paragraphs will identify and explain the security challenges and issues the companies experiences. Some of these issues will be solved by current trends and movements while other issues, due to current business developments and innovation, are likely to require addi-tional attention and effort to minimize impact.

Cyber risk is expected to escalate due to several factors:

Expanded Attack Surface & Cybersecurity Risks:
The widespread adoption of cloud computing, remote work, and connected devices has significantly increased the attack surface for modern organizations — creating more entry points for cyber attackers to exploit vulnerabilities and compromise systems.

Evolving Threat Actors & Advanced Cybercrime Tactics:
The sophistication of cyber threat actors is rapidly increasing. According to Europol, there’s a growing trend where organized criminal groups collaborate with technology-savvy individuals to execute complex cybercrimes.

Cybercrime-as-a-Service (CaaS) has become mainstream — attackers can now purchase ransomware kits, complete with customer-like support services, directly from the dark web.
Targeted attacks such as spear-phishing can even be ordered on demand, directed at high-value individuals like a company’s CEO or regional COO.

Cybercriminals are also leveraging advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, to conduct more precise, scalable, and persistent cyberattacks.

Regulatory Pressure & Compliance Expectations:
Organizations today face increasing pressure from regulators, business partners, and the public to provide greater transparency around cybersecurity incidents — all while remaining fully compliant with existing data privacy laws such as GDPR, KVKK, and industry-specific regulations.
Balancing incident disclosure with legal obligations is becoming a key challenge in cybersecurity governance.

Third-Party & Vendor Risk Management:
In today’s highly interconnected digital ecosystem, vulnerabilities in third-party vendors or service providers can pose serious threats to an entire organization.
Supply chain cybersecurity has become a critical focus area as attackers increasingly exploit weak links outside the core infrastructure.

To mitigate these risks, companies must implement robust vendor risk management practices — including security assessments, due diligence processes, and continuous monitoring — to ensure that partners and suppliers maintain high cybersecurity standards.

Key Responsibilities & Objectives

The roadmap focuses on:

• Establishing direction aligned with regulatory & business needs
• Elevating enterprise-wide security maturity
• Enforcing clear roles, controls, and governance
• Sustaining a secure digital ecosystem
• Managing third-party and supply chain risks
• Protecting confidentiality, integrity, and availability

Country-Specific Cybersecurity Risks: Türkiye Context

The next lists could pre-identify and explain the security challenges and key risks the company experiences. While some cybersecurity challenges can be addressed through current trends and evolving best practices, others driven by rapid business innovation and complex digital transformation will require deeper strategic focus, additional resources, and proactive effort to mitigate risk and minimize business impact.

🚨 Rising Threats & Future Risk Landscape

• Attack Surface Expansion: Cloud, remote work, IoT = more exposure
• Advanced Threat Actors: AI-powered, service-based cybercrime
• Third-Party Risk: Vendors = potential backdoors
• Regulatory Pressure: GDPR, KVKK, sector-specific compliance

• Key Risky Areas
  • Improve Information Security Management
  • Improve Information Risk Management
  • Improve 3rd party (Vendor) Management
  • Improve Security Architecture
• Key Challenges
  • Administrative Organization
  • Information Security Governance
  • Capabilities in both 1st and 2nd line
  • Clear prioritization of security initiatives
  • Awareness and ownership
• Restrictions
  • Turkey’s proximity to war zones due to its geopolitical location and sanctions affecting the whole global markets and intercountry financial transactions makes it possible to change,
  • The financial situation the country is involved in (sudden changes in inflation, high rates of exchange),
  • Legislations issued by regulative bodies such as EPDK, KVKK, and CMB.

Risky Areas

• Information Risk Management
• Security Architecture
• Vendor Oversight

Challenges

• Security ownership gaps
• Governance fragmentation
• Limited capabilities in 1st & 2nd lines

Restrictions

• Geopolitical instability
• Macroeconomic volatility
• Local regulatory pressures (KVKK, EPDK, SPK)

As a result, if you are working on People, Processes, and Technology. The personnel of your company is one of the most effective measures of Cyber Security. Vigilant employees keep hackers and attackers outside our organization. Processes are needed to maintain a continuous process of control and assurance. The objective is to automate most of these processes. Highly automated processes foresee our need for continuous integration and continuous delivery of secure services.

🧠 People. Process. Technology.

Your people are your greatest asset — and your greatest risk surface.
Build security awareness. Automate resilient processes.
Choose technology that supports continuous integration and secure delivery.

Don’t forget, Predicting the future with complete accuracy is nearly impossible. However, there is value in forming the basis for a proactive approach to information security based on identified relevant trends.

🟦 Final Thoughts

You may not predict the future, but you can prepare for it.
The evolving role of the CISO is to lead with insight, act with purpose, and protect with adaptability.

Good luck in your cybersecurity journey. May your roadmap be clear, and your defenses resilient.