In Episode 2 of The Strategy Layer Live, we dig into one of the most urgent — and least acknowledged — leadership challenges in cybersecurity today.

The CISO role isn’t dying. But it is being slowly redefined, compressed, and undermined by structural misalignment, rising board expectations, and misused metrics. What one security executive called the “co-morbid poisoning” of the role has become a shared, often unspoken reality for many cybersecurity leaders — especially those navigating the tension between visibility and actual control.

In this episode, host Steve Tout, Founder & CEO of Identient, sits down with Steve Zalewski, former CISO of Levi Strauss & Co., trusted advisor, and respected voice in the cybersecurity leadership community. Together, they unpack how the CISO role is being reshaped — not by failure, but by a system that was never built to support sustainable, high-impact security leadership in the first place.

📌 What we cover in this episode:

• The origins of the term co-morbid poisoning and why it resonates now more than ever
• How modern CISOs are over-indexed on responsibility and under-indexed on authority
• The role of frameworks, dashboards, and performance theater in eroding trust
• What aspiring and seasoned CISOs alike need to understand about governance drift
• How Strategic Performance Intelligence (SPI) can anchor the next evolution of security leadership
• Reflections on RSA Conference and how many “leadership” panels are missing the real conversation

This conversation directly inspired a chapter in Steve Tout’s upcoming book,
The CISO On The Razor’s Edge: Leading Cybersecurity When the System Is Designed to Break — launching June 2 on Amazon.

🎯 Whether you’re a CISO, CIO, or cybersecurity executive navigating the shifting expectations of your role — or you're simply trying to lead with more clarity in an increasingly fragmented environment — this episode will give you language, perspective, and energy for what’s next.

📘 Pre-order the book or download a free chapter: https://tout.media
🧠 Join the SPI 360 Executive Circle: https://www.identient.ai/slack
🌐 Learn more: https://identient.ai