Being a CISO can feel like an unwinnable battle.
CISOs today are called to help the business understand cyber risk, put in place controls appropriate to its risk appetite, and ensure that it can withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions while continuing to deliver required business outcomes. And as I’ve noted in the past, they must do so in a world where cyber attackers need to be right only once, while defenders are expected to be right all the time.
This is an unfair fight. It is also reality.
Semperis’ new cyber documentary, Midnight in the War Room, will premiere at Black Hat USA on August 5, 2026. The film tackles a point many of us have been trying to make for years: Cybersecurity is not a technical endeavor. It is a business resilience issue, a leadership issue, and in many sectors, a societal issue.
That is the truth that Midnight in the War Room addresses. Too often, cybersecurity is still discussed as though it sits neatly inside the IT department. In my experience, that is a mistake.
CISOs are on the front lines of the cyber war
A material cyberattack rapidly becomes a business crisis. It touches operations, communications, legal, finance, supply chain, customer trust, and in some sectors, even safety and public well-being. It is also a personal crisis for those on the front lines of what can feel like an unending onslaught. Not only are CISOs often fighting attacks that can result in real human catastrophe, as in the case of ransomware that threatens to shut down hospital operations or cyberattacks launched as part of global warfare, but attackers have begun turning to threats of physical violence against cybersecurity leaders and personnel.
Understanding these challenges, Semperis didn’t want to simply examine the technical challenges of malware or cyber intrusion. We wanted to amplify the real voices of the leaders and teams expected to keep organizations standing, even under the highest possible pressure.
What is cyber resilience?
Cyber resilience is business resilience. In today’s digital landscape, cyber is often just the trigger for a broader business-impacting event. That distinction matters.
Midnight in the War Room places particular emphasis on the emotional and psychological toll of cyber defense, especially for CISOs safeguarding critical infrastructure and essential services. I think that is exactly right.
The modern CISO role is broader than many outside the profession appreciate. It demands technical fluency but also judgment, diplomacy, cyber crisis management, incident response leadership, and the ability to explain cyber risk in language that boards and executive teams can act on. It requires leaders to think about prolonged outages, cross-border operational disruption, supply chain fragility, and the human resilience needed to manage an incident that may last days or weeks, not hours.
Cybercrime is estimated to cost $10.5 trillion annually. There are 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs, and average CISO tenure is less than 11 months. These are not just talking points. They describe an environment in which defenders are under constant strain.
As General (Ret.) David Petraeus has noted: “Every single day, there’s a war going on in cyber space.”
True cyber resilience requires more than just prevention
The cybersecurity community knows that every organization must now maintain an “assume breach” stance when it comes to cyber threats. Cyber resilience is not measured purely by your ability to prevent attacks. The more important question is whether you can recover your business quickly and with integrity after a cyber incident.
That is especially true in the identity security space.
Adversaries are consistently drawn to identity systems because that is where they can create the maximum blast radius. In most organizations, identity is the lifeblood of the digital ecosystem, and Active Directory remains at the core of that environment. If you cannot trust or restore that foundation quickly, you cannot credibly claim to be resilient.
Identity security, operational resilience, and the hardest decisions in a cyber crisis
Strong cyber leadership is not only about technical response. In a real cyber crisis, the hardest decisions are often business decisions.
- Who has delegated authority to act?
- Which business services get prioritized?
- When do you communicate with regulators, employees, suppliers, customers, or shareholders?
- How long can the business tolerate the loss of core systems?
- What are the legal, reputational, operational, and safety implications of the response path you choose?
These questions sit at the heart of operational resilience.
In tabletop exercises, I have often found that organizations instinctively default to technology discussions while neglecting the human, legal, and reputational dimensions. Yet technology is only as good as the process and the people managing it.
In the era of AI proliferation, it can be easy to lose focus on that. Yet at its heart, strong cybersecurity leadership is about people.
As Jen Easterly has said, “Defeating the malicious cyberattacks that threaten our way of life will take more than technology designed to be secure, it will take the creativity and curiosity of the human mind. Those qualities empower defenders to outthink and outmaneuver adversaries, and it’s an honor to be part of Midnight in the War Room to advance that mission.”
The best cybersecurity leaders create space for diverse perspectives, ensure the quietest voice in the room is heard, and keep teams focused on sustaining the business while the technical responders do what they need to do.
Real voices, real challenges
Midnight in the War Room brings together more than 50 experts, including CISOs, reformed hackers, military and national security leaders, cyber psychologists, journalists, and victims. Among the most recognizable names are:
- Chris Inglis
- Jen Easterly
- General (Ret.) David Petraeus
- Marcus Hutchins
- Professor Mary Aiken
The broader cast includes Marene Allison, Krista Arndt, Alan Berry, Roger Brotz, Grace Cassy, and Chase Cunningham, among others.
The breadth of voices in the film is important. Cyber resilience is not owned by one function. It requires insight from practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and leaders who understand how cyber pressure shapes decision-making in the real world.
Chris Inglis put it plainly: “The greatest threat we face isn’t just the sophistication of nation-state cyberattacks, it’s complacency. Resilience is forged when we refuse to accept today’s defenses as enough and prepare for the battles still to come.”
The people behind the fight for resilience
Cybersecurity leaders are operating in an environment of increasing threat complexity, tighter budgets, persistent skills shortages, and ever greater digital dependency. Against that backdrop, organizations need to be much clearer about what true cyber resilience requires.
It is not enough to assume the technology will be available when you need it. It is not enough to assume standard communications channels will continue to work during a cyber crisis. It is not enough to assume somebody else owns the problem.
Leaders must be able to articulate cyber risk in business terms, define critical services, prioritize recovery, empower responders appropriately, and ensure the organization has rehearsed for the unthinkable rather than simply documented it.
Any incident response leader will recognize the truth of Marcus Hutchins’ statement: “At the end of the day, it does come down to: Was the right person in the right place at the right time?”
If Midnight in the War Room helps more executive teams understand that, it will have done its job.
Join the War Room
I do not think security leaders need another dramatized account of cyber risk. What they need is a clearer, more honest public understanding of what the work actually involves and of the challenges they face every day.
Ready to enter the War Room? If you’re attending Black Hat USA next month, join Semperis at the Midnight in the War Room premiere on August 5. Also keep an eye out for Enter the War Room tabletop simulations focusing on healthcare, critical infrastructure, and retail, co-hosted with WWT and available in the Business Hall. In the meantime, you can watch the documentary trailer here. Then, join the conversation on Instagram or LinkedIn.
