The CISO as Lone Fighter: Why External Support Makes Strategic Sense

The Growing Burden of the Modern CISO

The role of the Chief Information Security Officer has fundamentally changed in recent years. Where the CISO was previously primarily a technical expert, they are today simultaneously a risk advisor, compliance manager, communicator to the board, and crisis manager. At the same time, requirements from NIS2, DORA, and a rapidly changing threat landscape have grown exponentially.

The problem: hardly any internal security team can handle all of this alone. Not due to lack of competence, but due to structural limits: time, resources, access to specialized data sources, and the impossibility of simultaneously looking inward and outward.

What Internal Teams Structurally Cannot Do

Internal security teams are by definition focused on their own infrastructure. That is correct and necessary – but it means external ecosystems are naturally underrepresented:

• Darknet and Criminal Underground: Internal teams typically lack both the access and operational presence to effectively monitor what happens there.
• Breadth of Threat Intelligence: Building and maintaining a high-quality, broadly covered threat intelligence base requires specialized infrastructure and dedicated resources that rarely make sense for individual companies.
• Brand Monitoring and Takedowns: Phishing sites and brand abuse infrastructure require rapid action and established relationships with hosting providers and registrars – an area difficult to staff internally.

What External Support Can Achieve – and What It Cannot

External cybersecurity service providers do not replace internal competencies – they complement them. The CISO remains responsible for internal security strategy, internal processes, and governance. What external specialists contribute:

Specialized Access: Operational presence in ecosystems that cannot be covered internally. Threat intelligence feeds based on shared data from many clients and long operational experience.

Scalable Capacity: Incident response or takedown support without building internal capacities that would sit idle 90% of the time.

Independent Perspective: An external assessment of the security situation and risk exposure that allows the CISO to reference independent validation to the board.

The Right Model for CISOs Under Pressure

The model we see working best in practice: internal teams for everything inside the perimeter, external specialists for everything happening outside. Clear escalation processes, regular joint briefings, and documented collaboration that can also be demonstrated to regulators and insurers.

Note: This article is for general information. We are happy to advise on your specific security organization.