The CISO’s role today has fundamentally evolved from a technical function to a critical pillar of business strategy, governance, and organizational resilience. To capture this strategic shift, CSO Pakistan, together with CXO Masters Academy, recently concluded a pivotal two-city Executive Roundtable series, presented by our strategic partner, Commtel. This initiative was specifically designed to capture the C-Suite pulse on the future of InfoSec, generating strategic and granular insights with a sharp focus on Fiscal Year 2026. This event series is a core component of CXO Masters Academy’s mission, which serves as the events and intelligence arm of CXO Media, ensuring that the insights gathered contribute directly to capacity building and the creation of valuable market intelligence for the community.
The launch of the series began with an engaging and powerful session at the Serena Hotel in Islamabad. This was an intentionally small, curated gathering of 13 top-tier executives, including CISOs like Amir Siddiqui (Abhi Bank), Jawad Khalid Mirza (Askari Bank), and Mustapha Lotia (Telenor Microfinance Bank), alongside public sector leaders such as Dr Haider Abbas (DG, NCERT). The leadership consensus that emerged was rooted in structural change: the fundamental shift to Zero-Trust architecture must be mandated across new and existing infrastructure to manage risk in hybrid environments. Crucially, the discussion moved beyond cost reduction, establishing that security must enable digital transformation by embracing agile risk management and demonstrating its value in driving business growth. The attendees collectively addressed the dual-edged challenge of AI, noting the urgent need to defend against AI-powered attacks while exploring the integration of AI-powered XDR to augment existing Threat Management capabilities and overcome the fatigue associated with managing high-volume alerts.
This C-Level dialogue culminated in two crucial, non-technical mandates: governance and talent. Leaders emphasized that compliance is a strategic, foundational component, not merely a checklist, a point given urgency by the forthcoming Digital Nation Act. Furthermore, the acute talent shortage and resultant brain drain were identified as systemic threats. The session concluded with a strong call for immediate, structured collaboration between industry and academia to build specialized capacity and develop retention strategies, recognizing the human element and a pervasive security-first culture as Pakistan’s ultimate defense. The Lahore event, hosted at the Pearl Continental Hotel, successfully broadened this strategic conversation, engaging teams and senior management from a wider array of organizations to embed these C-Suite mandates into operational execution. The success of this series provides a rich, granular dataset for CSO Pakistan’s upcoming content, reinforcing our commitment to support security professionals with unparalleled depth and insight.
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