Beyond the Hype: A CISO's Practical Guide to GenAI Readiness

As a CISO, your world is now saturated with opinions about Generative AI. We’re told it’s the ultimate threat, the ultimate savior, and the ultimate disruptor, all at once. In the rush to respond, many organizations are investing in AI for training without a clear strategy, driven by the fear of being left behind. But they are asking the wrong question. The question isn’t if you should use AI, but where and why.

Through our research and work with senior security leaders, a critical reality has emerged: the value of GenAI in cybersecurity training is selective, not universal. Simply layering AI onto existing programs won’t build resilience. In fact, without a practical framework, it can create a dangerous illusion of progress. A truly effective, modern readiness program requires a nuanced approach—one that leverages GenAI as a powerful tool where it excels, while doubling down on the human-centric skills it cannot replicate.

Where GenAI Is a True Force-Multiplier

We must move past the abstract and get specific about where AI can make a tangible difference. When used correctly, GenAI can be a phenomenal force-multiplier for security teams, especially in the preparation and setup of training exercises.

Consider the time it takes to build a realistic phishing email or a convincing social media profile for a crisis simulation. GenAI can generate this content in seconds, not hours, freeing up your team to focus on higher-value strategic tasks. It can summarize complex threat intelligence to inform exercise scenarios, draft after-action reports, and even help script dynamic, branching narratives for tabletop exercises. In these areas, AI is an accelerator. It handles the rote, time-consuming work, allowing your people to focus their energy on the complex problem-solving and decision-making that builds true readiness.

The Irreplaceable Human Experience

However, for every area where AI excels, there is another where it falls short. And this is the most critical point that the hype cycle overlooks. GenAI cannot replicate the complex, high-pressure, and often chaotic experience of responding to a real-world cyber incident.

Cybersecurity is not a solo endeavor. It is a team sport played under immense stress. Can a language model simulate the friction between a legal team demanding caution and an incident response team needing to act? Can it capture the subtle, non-verbal cues in a boardroom that signal a loss of confidence? No. These are uniquely human experiences.

True readiness is forged in the fire of realistic, hands-on drills and simulations. These activities build muscle memory, improve cross-team communication, and test the human ability to make critical judgments when plans go awry. An effective training program must be built around proving and improving these human capabilities. Relying on AI to teach these skills is like trying to learn how to swim by reading a book about it—you end up missing the most important part.

Using AI to Measure What Matters

A practical approach to GenAI requires a new way of thinking not just about training, but about measurement. If AI is changing how we prepare, it must also change how we measure readiness. Instead of just tracking completion rates, we need to focus on performance data that proves capability.

This is another area where AI can be a powerful ally. We can use AI to measure its own impact, analyzing performance data from human-led exercises to provide a clear, evidence-based picture of our resilience. It can help us benchmark our teams against AI-powered threats and track improvement over time. 

This provides CISOs with something they desperately need: a defensible, data-driven story to tell the board. It turns readiness from a subjective feeling into an objective metric. You can walk into any leadership meeting with evidence that your program is preparing your people for the real-world threats they will face.

The path forward is not to adopt AI universally or to reject it entirely. It’s to be strategic and selective. Embrace GenAI as a force-multiplier for the preparatory work, but never forget that resilience is, and will remain, a fundamentally human endeavor. By focusing on evidence-based, human-centric exercises, we can move beyond the hype and build programs that deliver provable readiness for the challenges of today and tomorrow.

Is your organization prepared for the real impact of GenAI on cybersecurity? Download our new whitepaper, GenAI's Impact on Cybersecurity Skills and Training and get the insights you need to stay ahead of the curve.

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