Cyber Culture for CISOs: Questions the Board Will Ask (and How to Answer)

If you’re a CISO, you already know this: the board is suddenly very interested in “cyber culture.”

Between NCSC’s cyber security culture principles, the Cyber Security Board Toolkit, and new governance guidance, culture is no longer a fluffy side topic. It’s part of how boards are expected to govern cyber risk, right alongside strategy, resilience, and incident response. ^NCSC

Even if you’re not operating in the UK, or you don’t report directly against NCSC guidance, this still matters. NIST’s human-centered cybersecurity work and its focus on employee awareness both stress that people, behavior, and organizational context are now core to effective security, not an afterthought. In the US, CISA’s Cyber Essentials explicitly talks about building a “culture of cyber readiness” across leadership, staff, and operations, breaking it into practical actions for executives and teams. ^CISA

Taken together, NCSC, NIST, and CISA are all pointing in the same direction:

regulators, insurers, and boards are increasingly going to expect you to treat cyber culture and the human element as part of mainstream cyber risk management—not as a side project owned by “awareness.”

So even if the NCSC logo never appears in your audit, its culture principles are a pretty good preview of where expectations are heading globally. That’s good news… and a little terrifying. Because the questions you’re about to get from the board are changing from:

• “Are we secure?”

• “Are we compliant?”

to things like:

• “How are you fostering a positive security culture?”

• “How do we know our people would do the right thing under pressure?”

• “What should we, as a board, actually be doing?”

This article is your conversation guide. We’ll walk through:

• What boards really care about when they say “culture”

• The NCSC-flavored questions you’re likely to hear

• How to answer them in a way that is honest, clear, and strategic

• How to bring in HumanOS™, your cyber culture model, and your roadmap without drowning anyone in jargon

Use this as a prep doc, a slide skeleton, or frankly, a bit of self-therapy before the next audit & risk committee. (If you need some help, call us. This is our jam.) 

Step 1 – Remember What the Board Actually Cares About

NCSC is very clear about the board’s role:

• Cyber is a strategic, business risk, not just “good IT.”

• Boards must govern cyber risk at the same level as financial or legal risk.

• They are expected to ask informed questions, understand the risk profile, and oversee strategy and resilience. ^NCSC

So when they ask about “culture,” they’re really asking:

• Are our people and ways of working helping or undermining our cyber resilience?

• Can we trust that behavior under pressure will match our policies and controls?

• Are we, as a board, doing our part to set the tone, allocate resources, and hold the right people accountable?

Your job isn’t to turn them into cyber experts. NCSC explicitly says that’s not the board’s role. Your job is to bridge the gap between technical detail and board-level decisions. 

So let’s look at the questions they’re likely to ask—and how you can answer without spiraling into packet-level detail.

Question 1: “What Do You Mean by ‘Cyber Security Culture’—And Why Should We Care?”

What they’re really asking

“Is this a buzzword, or does it affect our risk, resilience, and reputation in ways we should actually care about?”

A strong, board-ready answer

Keep it short, then link it to NCSC and your business:

“When I say ‘cyber security culture,’ I mean the shared understanding of what’s normal and valued around security here—how people really behave, especially under pressure.

NCSC talks about culture as the human and organizational context that makes technical controls succeed or fail. If our culture supports early reporting, smart decision-making, and good behavior by default, our controls are far more effective. If it doesn’t, people will route around them, hide mistakes, and expose us to avoidable risk.” 

Then make it concrete:

• Link to recent incidents or near misses that had cultural causes, not just technical ones.

• Tie it to outcomes they care about: regulatory exposure, downtime, customer trust, financial impact.

You can also introduce your system view without going full PhD:

“Practically, we look at three things together: how humans actually think and behave under pressure (via the Cybermaniacs HumanOS), how we do security in everyday work, and how our organizational structures and incentives support or undermine that. That’s what I mean by ‘culture’ in this context.”

Question 2: “How Do We Know What Our Cyber Culture Is Today?”

What they’re really asking

“Are you guessing, or do you have actual data and insight we can rely on?”

A strong answer

Position this in terms of measurement layers, aligning with NCSC’s emphasis on indicators and board information.

“We don’t rely on gut feel. We measure culture across three layers:

• Perception & climate – what people believe and feel, through short NCSC-aligned surveys and interviews (for example, whether they feel safe reporting mistakes, or whether they see security as an enabler or a blocker).

• Behavior – what people actually do, using patterns in incident reporting, near-miss data, phishing results, and everyday secure behaviors like how they share data or use access controls.

• Operations & structure – how the system is set up: whether security is involved early in projects, how usable our policies and processes are, and how often culture and human risk appear in leadership and board discussions.

We pull those together into a simple culture scorecard so we can see trends and report back to you.”

If you’re already using an NCSC-aligned baseline or scorecard, mention it:

“We completed our first Cybermaniacs NCSC-aligned culture baseline in [month/year]. It showed strengths in [X] and weaknesses in [Y], which we’re now addressing through our roadmap.”

Question 3: “What Are Our Biggest Human and Culture Risks Right Now?”

What they’re really asking

“Where could our people, processes, and ways of working realistically hurt us in the next incident—and what are you doing about it?”

A strong answer

Anchor it in 3–5 clear themes, not a laundry list. For example:

“Right now, our biggest human and cultural risks are:

1. Late reporting and near-miss silence in [specific areas], which increases the impact of incidents when they do surface.

2. Workarounds around [particular processes or tools], which are signaling that the secure way of working is too slow or confusing.

3. Leadership inconsistency in a few parts of the business—teams receive mixed messages when deadlines and secure practices conflict.

4. New GenAI usage outpacing guidance, meaning people are improvising with sensitive data.”

“Each of these maps back to NCSC’s culture principles—trust and openness, usable rules, leadership, and adaptability—and each has a specific action plan attached to it.”

Tie it back to risk reduction, not just vibes.

Question 4: “What’s the Plan? Do We Have a Roadmap for Improving Cyber Culture?”

What they’re really asking

“Is there a structured approach here, or just scattered initiatives?”

A strong answer

Reference your 12-month roadmap:

“Yes. We’re running culture as a yearly operating cycle, not a one-off campaign. We have a 12-month roadmap that looks like this:

• Q1 – Discover & align: baseline culture and human risk, stand up our cross-functional culture group.

• Q2 – Quick wins & system fixes: deliver visible changes, fix one or two high-friction processes, and start targeted leadership engagement.

• Q3 – Deep integration: embed culture work into projects, HR, and training; mature our metrics.

• Q4 – Prove & plan: show impact with metrics and stories, run a retrospective, and reset the focus for the next cycle.”

“This year, our primary focus principles are [e.g., Trust & Openness and Usable Rules], because they’re where our baseline and incident patterns show the most risk.”

Boards like rhythm and repeatable processes. This answer tells them culture is now being run like any other strategic program, in line with NCSC’s “methodical and proactive” approach. ^NCSC

Question 5: “How Are We Reporting Culture and Human Risk to the Board?”

What they’re really asking

“Will you flood us with numbers, or give us a clear, decision-ready view?”

A strong answer

Describe your scorecard and cadence:

“We’ll report culture and human risk to you twice a year in depth, with a shorter update in between. Each pack will show:

• A short narrative: what’s improving, what’s stuck, and what that means for risk.

• A view against culture principles: where we’re strong, where we’re weak, and how that connects to incidents and near misses.

• A small set of key metrics across perception, behavior, and operations—things like psychological safety around reporting, near-miss trends, process friction, and leadership engagement.

• The actions and experiments we’re running in response.”

“You won’t see raw survey dumps or every phishing metric; you’ll see the parts that matter for governance and strategic decisions.”

Also if applicable point out how this connects to the NCSC Board Toolkit’s idea of using clear indicators and KPI dashboards to support decision making.

Question 6: “Are We Investing Enough—and in the Right Things?”

What they’re really asking

“Do we need to spend more? Or are we just spending in the wrong places?”

A strong answer

Shift from “more budget please” to “right mix of controls + culture + structure.”

“Culture work is not an optional extra; it’s part of making our technical and process controls actually work as intended. Right now:

• We’re adequately invested in [core technical capabilities].

• We are under-invested in [for example: secure process redesign, leadership engagement, or ongoing culture programs]—the things that move us from ‘we have controls’ to ‘people can and do use them well.’

My recommendation is not just ‘more spend,’ but a rebalance: we need to allocate [X] toward NCSC-aligned culture and human risk work over the next 12–18 months, specifically in [areas], because that’s where our baseline and incidents show the most leverage.”

If you can, link to reduced incident likelihood/impact, regulatory expectations, and board duties under modern cyber governance codes and regimes (NIS2/NCA, etc.).

Question 7: “What Do You Need From Us as a Board?”

What they’re really asking

“How do we avoid being the blocker or the excuse—and actually help?”

NCSC’s governance, NIST, CISA and NACD's board guidance leans hard on this: boards are expected to ask the right questions, set expectations, and support a positive security culture—not just receive reports. ^NACD

A strong answer

Be specific and practical:

“There are three things I need from you:

1. Visible leadership signals. When you talk about cyber, mention culture and behavior, not just technology. Reinforce that early reporting and learning from incidents are expected and valued.

2. Clear expectations for executives. Include security culture and human risk in performance conversations with the executive team—especially when deadlines and security requirements collide.

3. Support for the roadmap. Back the Cyber Risk and Human Resilience Culture roadmap and its trade-offs: time for staff to participate, budget for process fixes, and space for us to iterate based on what the metrics and incidents are telling us.”

“If you do those three things, you amplify everything we’re doing across HumanOS, our security practices, and our organizational dynamics.”

How Cybermaniacs Can Help You Answer These Questions (Without Drowning in Slides)

When boards start asking serious questions about cyber culture, many CISOs hit the same wall:

• They know culture is the problem,

• they have some metrics and stories,

• but pulling it into a coherent board-ready narrative is… a lot.

That’s usually where we come in.

We help CISOs by:

• Running a culture and human risk baseline using HumanOS, our cyber safety & digital risk culture model, and our organizational dynamics model.

• Mapping the results to clear themes and board questions (“Where are we strong? Where are we exposed? What are we doing about it?”).

• Building a simple culture scorecard that fits alongside your technical risk dashboards and board reporting.

• Co-designing a 12-month roadmap and leadership story you can use with the board, exec team, and regulators.

You stay the owner of the strategy and the risk. We help you make the culture story concrete, credible, and repeatable.

Cheat Sheet: Board Questions & CISO Answers (NCSC Cyber Culture Edition)

To wrap up, here’s the quick-glance version you can literally copy into your prep notes:

• “What do you mean by cyber security culture?”
  → Shared understanding of what’s normal and valued around security; how people actually behave, especially under pressure. It’s the human context NCSC says makes our controls succeed or fail.

• “How do we know what our culture is today?”
  → We measure perception, behavior, and structure; we’ve baselined against NCSC principles and built a simple scorecard.

• “What are our biggest human/culture risks?”
  → [3–5 clear themes] tied to trust, workarounds, leadership, and change (e.g., AI), each with an action plan.

• “What’s the plan to improve?”
  → A 12-month NCSC-aligned roadmap: Q1 baseline & focus, Q2 quick wins & fixes, Q3 integration, Q4 prove & plan.

• “How are you reporting this to us?”
  → Twice-yearly deep dives plus a short update, with a principle-based view and a small set of core metrics.

• “Are we investing enough, and in the right things?”
  → We’re rebalancing toward the culture and human risk levers that make existing controls more effective.

• “What do you need from us?”
  → Visible support, clear expectations for executives, and backing for the roadmap and its trade-offs.

Get those seven answers crisp, and you’re not just “talking culture”, you are showing that the human risk management function is running as a governed, measurable, board-level program.