Each year, thousands of CISOs across Gartner C-level Communities complete our proprietary Leadership Perspective Survey. We ask C-level security leaders to share their top priorities for their function and across the enterprise, as well as their planned investments to help achieve their goals.
In 2025, CISOs are managing a complex cybersecurity landscape, while also trying to empower growth through technology and innovation. Like their C-suite peers, CISOs are also seeking ways to create efficiencies and improve productivity with AI, as well as leveraging it for enhanced risk management.
More than 1,300 CISOs have responded to our survey thus far – here are highlights of the results.
Operating Budgets Are Steady
Nearly half – 46% – of CISOs report that their operating budget remains the same as last year. Thirty-eight percent say that their budget increased year over year, and only 15% of CISOs experienced a decrease in their budget from 2024.
Planned Spending to Stay the Same or Increase
Similar to their operating budgets, 44% of CISOs report that their planned spending on technology and services will remain the same as last year, and 41% say that their investments will increase. Only 15% of security leaders plan to spend less this year than last year.
CISOs Are Investing in IAM, MFA & Zero Trust
Forty-three percent of CISOs plan to invest in the areas of Identity and Access Management (IAM), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and Zero Trust, and 40% intend to spend on data loss prevention. The other planned investment areas for CISOs are generative and traditional AI (35%), cloud security/CASB (33%) and governance, risk and compliance (32%).
CISOs’ Top Priority is Cyber Resilience
Cyber resilience is a new choice for a functional priority in the survey this year, and it immediately rose to the top for CISOs. In qualitative follow-up conversations to the survey, CISOs are expressing the need to have response strategies in place and are focusing on improving their organization’s resilience and ability to recover operations quickly. Security operations has also grown in importance in 2025, while most other focus areas for CISOs are regularly among their top priorities.
Topics of Interest for CISOs
In addition to priorities and investment areas, CISOs share what they most want to discuss with C-level peers and solution providers at events. These are the trending topics for CISOs in 2025:
- Cybersecurity Leadership & Influence
- Securing Artificial Intelligence Adoption
- CISO Role Evolution
- Communicating with the Board
- Shaping a Secure Culture
To learn more about sponsoring Gartner C-level Communities and events and how our proprietary data can help your message resonate with C-level decision makers, contact us.
Based on 1,300+ CISO responses from Gartner C-level Communities’ proprietary Leadership Perspective Survey, March 2025.
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