October 30, 2025
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In recent years, it has become clear that risk is not a theoretical concept. It takes shape in everyday operations: in a constantly evolving network, in application integrations, in continuous releases, and in how teams react when a system behaves unexpectedly.
To manage this complexity, a new operational triangle is emerging—one that is becoming the real governance architecture for modern risk management: the CISO, the Risk Manager, and the CSIRT Coordinator. These roles carry different responsibilities, but today they must collaborate far more closely and continuously than in the past. Many organizations are not yet prepared for this cultural shift, but 2026 will be the year when this triangle becomes indispensable.
The first truth we must acknowledge is that the infrastructure—taken as a whole—evolves faster than the governance attempting to control it. Every day new assets appear, new applications are installed, and new dependencies emerge, often with lateral connections across IT, OT, and IoT environments.
This continuously shifting landscape makes traditional risk-management mechanisms inevitably slow. Faced with infrastructures that behave like living organisms, we need a system of roles that is just as dynamic. The security triangle exists precisely to bring into governance what is already happening in the field, outside the traditional oversight layers.
CISOs and Risk Managers have coexisted for years within mature organizations, gradually becoming highly specialized and often involved in strategic decision-making.
The CISO focuses on security and architectures; the Risk Manager on measurement frameworks and methodological consistency.
Between these two roles—both of which have evolved from operational positions into strategic ones—a gap has emerged for a more operational function, dedicated specifically to incident management.
The CSIRT Coordinator enters exactly here.
It is the missing connection, the role capable of bringing real-world elements into governance: direct observation of network flows, concrete understanding of application dependencies, and a practical view of operational priorities.
It is a role of coordination and continuity.
Anyone who has ever managed an incident or worked in threat response knows the value of a single convergence point that aligns IT, vendors, leadership, compliance, and risk.
NIS2 formalizes this direction by introducing a figure responsible for coordinating incident-related activities and maintaining the information flow between stakeholders.
The CSIRT Coordinator thus becomes the role connecting strategy, risk, and operations.
2026 will mark a turning point for a very simple reason: cyber risk will no longer be considered a specialist risk—it will be a full-fledged business risk.
Boards must be able to understand, discuss, and govern it.
Organizations will need to demonstrate not only compliance, but the ability to react in a coordinated, measurable way.
And above all, they must do so quickly, with reliable information and a decision-making model that no longer depends on a single department.
The security triangle addresses exactly this shift:
The CISO provides direction and architectural vision.
The Risk Manager provides criteria, metrics, and methodological coherence.
The CSIRT Coordinator provides real-world grounding, operational speed, and continuity.
Three roles that are effective only when integrated, never overlapping—three functions that deliver real value when they share the same data, the same evidence, and the same representation of the infrastructure.
|
Role
|
Key Responsibilities
|
Operational focus
|
|---|---|---|
|
CISO
|
• Guides the security strategy
• Translates technical risk into business risk • Defines direction and priorities |
Overall view of the infrastructure and exhibition areas
|
|
Risk Manager
|
• Assesses impacts and probabilities
• Ensures methodology and criteria • Supports evidence-based decisions |
Interpreting risk in relation to business processes
|
|
CSIRT
Representative
|
• Monitors what happens in the field
• Coordinates interventions and information flows • Identifies anomalies and operational dependencies |
Continuous connection between governance and operations
|
One of the most common mistakes organizations make is treating risk management as a linear, sequential process: analyze, assess, plan, implement.
A logical chain—yet incompatible with a world where the network changes shape every hour.
Risk today is a continuous phenomenon, not an event.
And governance must operate with that same logic.
CISO, Risk Manager, and CSIRT Coordinator must now function as a single team, each with their perspective but sharing a unified information flow.
Where this happens—typically in the most mature organizations—risk is no longer something to “detect,” but something that naturally emerges, evolves, and propagates before your eyes.
This makes it dramatically easier to take fast decisions, set meaningful priorities, and anticipate the effects of a change or vulnerability.
The security triangle works only if all roles operate using the same data.
What must be avoided are independently produced reports, tools offering conflicting insights, and information scattered across repositories that cannot be easily correlated.
What matters is a single, shared representation of the infrastructure: processes, assets, communications, and exposures must be visible—not as a static description, but as something you can observe and interpret as it changes.
Organizations leading the way in risk governance are those that have begun working on the reality of the infrastructure, not an abstract representation of it.
It doesn’t matter who speaks—CISO, Risk Manager or CSIRT Coordinator—when everyone sees the same data, alignment happens naturally. And the quality of decisions improves instantly.
The risk triangle is not an organizational experiment nor a theoretical exercise.
It is the structure that will allow organizations to operate in a world where digital risk is no longer an anomaly to be contained, but a structural element of the business itself.
Those who begin building this collaboration today will enter 2026 with a tangible advantage: stronger processes, a more natural risk-management culture, and a way of working capable of keeping pace with change—while maintaining coherence and continuity between decisions, technical evidence, and operational priorities.
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ai.esra SpA – strada del Lionetto 6 Torino, Italy, 10146
Tel +39 011 234 4611
CAP. SOC. € 50.000,00 i.v. – REA TO1339590
CF e PI 13107650015
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