The CISO-COO Partnership: Protecting Operational Excellence

Digital transformation has made cybersecurity preparation part of operational resilience, prompting CISOs and COOs to forge a purposeful partnership rather than work in parallel. The piece argues that downtime from cyberattacks is an existential operational risk that modern organisations must actively manage, with cyber resilience now inseparable from operational excellence.

According to David Elfering, director of security at transportation company Carrix, CISOs should treat the COO relationship as a top‑tier one alongside the CEO/CFO because operations disruption is often the business’s biggest practical risk.

The article warns against leaving the CISO‑COO relationship undernourished until a crisis forces collaboration, and advocates regular joint planning, clear crisis playbooks, and routine tabletop exercises that stress-test operational recovery decisions as well as technical incident response.

It also stresses that a crisis operations plan should specify which systems have failover capability, how long activation takes, and how revenue impact is timelineed, with explicit authority for operational decisions during an incident. Published on 12 December 2025, the piece concludes that organisations willing to embed cross‑functional playbooks and translate cyber risk into operational consequences will sustain operations during sophisticated attacks.