Inside the Mind of a CISO 2025 is a digital magazine report comprising 10 articles, each examining different aspects of the modern-day CISO experience. This year’s report looks at resilience in an AI-accelerated world. Let’s take a look at what that means.
Threat actors are becoming increasingly sophisticated, leveraging advanced techniques and AI-powered tools to breach our defenses. Meanwhile, our attack surfaces are evolving at breakneck speed, expanding faster than we can secure them. The reality is, as CISOs, we simply cannot keep up alone anymore.
This is where collective intelligence becomes our greatest asset. We need to lean on the wisdom, experience, and insights of the larger cybersecurity community to band together and defeat attackers as one unified force. That’s why, in this report, we are sharing real-world intelligence and battle-tested strategies from across our community to strengthen every security program.
This digital magazine includes vulnerability trend data with actionable intelligence to help you anticipate what’s coming next, an analysis of red teaming from a CISO’s perspective, tips to justify investments and report credibly to our boards, and insights into the gifts of objectivity and feedback to build stronger security programs. Whether you’re a first-time CISO, a seasoned vet, or even an aspiring security leader, this report is jam-packed with information that can help you make informed decisions.
Last year, Bugcrowd saw an 88% increase in hardware vulnerabilities and a 10% increase in API vulnerabilities. 81% of researchers and hackers cite that they’ve encountered a new hardware vulnerability they had never seen before in the past 12 months.
Prioritizing API and hardware testing ensures we proactively protect our systems and hardware so that CISOs can be more resilient and deliver secure experiences to users downstream.
The amount of sensitive data exposure and broken access control vulnerabilities exploded over the past year. There are quite a few reasons for this. Apps are getting more complex, and given the increase in features and integrations, access controls are becoming harder to manage. Apps are going through multiple dev cycles under pressure to release features quickly, often aided by AI-assisted coding. Security is being neglected, which is why we’re seeing these vulnerability types surge.
Critical vulnerability payouts have risen by 32%, showing that even in times of budget decreases, security teams are increasingly investing in findings from ethical hackers in their crowdsourced testing programs.
Getting objective perspectives on where and why you are vulnerable is crucial for any CISO looking to build a stronger security program. The most mature organizations don’t just value objective feedback, they prioritize it.
CISOs must go beyond annual pen tests that only provide a snapshot of their security posture. They must invest in continuous testing that incentivizes expert feedback. A big part of this is fostering a culture where learning more about your attack surface, discovering the unknown, or being “beaten” by a red team is not seen as failure but as opportunity.
Download the report today for more insights like this, infographics, CISO spotlights, hacker tips, and more.