Skills that carry over into consulting: Many of the skills CISOs honed inside large organizations translate directly to the new consulting job, while others suddenly matter more than they ever did before. In addition to technical skills, it is often the practical ones that prove most valuable.The ability to prioritize, sharpened over years in a CISO role, becomes especially important in consulting. “It matters more than anything else,” Gibbons argues, because in consulting environments resources are often limited. Consultants are paid not to know everything, but to know what matters most, which risks to tackle first, and which problems can safely wait.Crisis management is another essential skill. Paired with hands-on knowledge of cybersecurity processes and best practices, it gives former CISOs a real advantage as they move into consulting. Kedys highlights stress management: the ability to stay calm, focused and keep execution moving under pressure, which is just as valuable outside the enterprise as it ever was inside.But if there’s one translatable skill that everyone talks about, that skill is communication. “All of your security and compliance knowledge is wasted if you cannot communicate to a business audience,” Sage says.Kokhreidze agrees. Instead of leading with controls, tools or technical details, he focuses on what CTOs and other business leaders actually care about: outcomes. He talks about how security protects revenue, supports resilience, or builds confidence with regulators.
New skills needed in the toolkit: As CISOs move into consulting, they quickly discover they need new skills as well, some of which they may have deliberately avoided in their in-house roles. Chief among them is sales. “Eighty percent of your work is actually selling yourself,” says Kokhreidze. “You are first a business, and CISO second.”And being a business is time-consuming. Consultants must juggle personal branding, marketing, accounting, and writing. Writing and online presence, in particular, matter because done well, they signal credibility and give current and future clients a sense of how a CISO thinks.The multiple roles consultants have to play, switching between delivery, sales, marketing and admin while juggling several clients, come with a real mental toll. For many former in-house executives, adjusting to that constant context switching is one of the hardest parts of leaving a structured organization behind. “If you’re running your own consulting firm, context switching can be a struggle,” Sage says.In time, many consultants learn that discipline matters, and that saying no is part of the job. “You must become comfortable saying no to work that dilutes your positioning or turns you back into an outsourced operator rather than a trusted advisor,” Gibbons says.
Setting the right price: Many CISOs know their value inside an enterprise but translating that value into a consulting price is a different challenge altogether. It requires a shift from thinking like an employee to thinking like a business.”Skills are not different from a product,” Kedys says. “You just need to find the right product (in this case, the skill) and wrap it in a way a market will be most likely to take it.”That understanding, he adds, comes from market analysis: observing how executives buy, what they value, and what comparable services cost.Sage agrees with the idea of analyzing the market but says that CISOs coming from large enterprises and targeting small and mid-sized organizations often need to recalibrate their expectations. What feels like a modest rate to a global organization can be misaligned with the realities of smaller clients, particularly those buying advisory services for the first time.When thinking about pricing, Kokhreidze took a two-way approach. He looked at the market and assessed his value. Then he set a realistic income goal and worked backwards, factoring in how many clients he could serve well. The result was a pricing model that favored quality over volume, a trade-off he knew the clients he wanted to work with would resonate with.”B2B companies closing enterprise deals understand that professional security leadership costs far less than losing a single Euro10M+ contract to failed security reviews,” Kokhreidze says.When setting prices, one of the most common mistakes is charging for time rather than for the value the consultant brings to the table. Early in his career, Gibbons priced his work by the day instead of by the consequences it helped clients avoid. Over time, he moved toward outcome-based engagements, such as board assurance, regulatory readiness and post-incident recovery, so clients can understand more easily what they’re paying for.”Clients are buying judgment, not hours,” Gibbons says. This approach, however, is not universal. Some more traditional organizations remain firmly attached to day rates. In those environments, shifting negotiations can be difficult regardless of the expertise being offered.
Potential mistakes to avoid: Ask experienced consultants what mistakes newcomers tend to make, and the answers tend to be consistent. The biggest mistakes are rarely about security skills. They tend to cluster around mindset, money, and figuring out how to show up in the market.”The hardest lesson was realizing that being a great CISO doesn’t guarantee clients at all,” Kokhreidze says. “I quickly learned that professional expertise means nothing without strong sales and qualification skills, because you’ll waste months chasing companies that either don’t have the problem you’re trying to solve or aren’t ready to invest in fixing it.”Gibbons sees a related issue: consultants trying to recreate an in-house role from the outside. They take on operational responsibility, running programs or becoming embedded indefinitely. “That erodes margins and credibility,” he says.Another common misstep he points to is leading with tools, frameworks or certifications rather than judgment and experience. “Clients do not hire former CISOs for policy templates,” he argues. “They hire them to help make hard decisions with incomplete information.”Even CISOs who plan carefully before making the leap often discover that the freedom of consulting comes with hidden costs. As Sage puts it, “Most CISOs consulting for the first time underestimate how much time and effort go into just managing your own business.”
Potential mistakes to avoid: Ask experienced consultants what mistakes newcomers tend to make, and the answers tend to be consistent. The biggest mistakes are rarely about security skills. They tend to cluster around mindset, money, and figuring out how to show up in the market.”The hardest lesson was realizing that being a great CISO doesn’t guarantee clients at all,” Kokhreidze says. “I quickly learned that professional expertise means nothing without strong sales and qualification skills, because you’ll waste months chasing companies that either don’t have the problem you’re trying to solve or aren’t ready to invest in fixing it.”Gibbons sees a related issue: consultants trying to recreate an in-house role from the outside. They take on operational responsibility, running programs or becoming embedded indefinitely. “That erodes margins and credibility,” he says.Another common misstep he points to is leading with tools, frameworks or certifications rather than judgment and experience. “Clients do not hire former CISOs for policy templates,” he argues. “They hire them to help make hard decisions with incomplete information.”Even CISOs who plan carefully before making the leap often discover that the freedom of consulting comes with hidden costs. As Sage puts it, “Most CISOs consulting for the first time underestimate how much time and effort go into just managing your own business.”
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