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No Sizzle.

Just Substance.

Hitch Partners is a retained executive search firm that specializes in all things Information Security, with additional expertise in Business Technology, Cloud Infrastructure Engineering & Product Management.

We provide leadership search and advisory services as well as actionable data on trends in the Information Security domain.

2025 Annual CISO Compensation Survey Results

Hitch Partners would like to thank all of the CISOs and Security Leaders who participated in this year’s CISO Survey. We appreciate your time in helping us to continue to serve the community.

📊 Survey Results

The Most Expensive Hire is the One You Haven’t Made

For CEOs, CFOs, CTOs, GCs, CIOs — and the Board — a vacant CISO seat isn’t just a staffing issue. It’s a quantifiable increase in financial exposure every day it remains open.

Leaving the CISO seat vacant isn’t just a hiring challenge—it’s potentially an existential business risk. Every day without a security leader compounds exposure, drains executive bandwidth, and slows strategic progress. Yet these risks often remain opaque, making it difficult for boards and executives to fully grasp the urgency.

Hitch Partners has developed a CISO Vacancy Risk Calculator (VRC) by combining industry data and risk modeling algorithms to estimate the potential dollar impact of operating without a security leader.

The Hitch Partners VRC estimates the financial risk exposure your company takes on each day the CISO seat remains vacant — expressed as a daily cost-equivalent to make the risk visible and actionable.

Sample Calculation

A B2B SaaS company with $500M ARR, 1,200 employees, and an 8-person security team faces an estimated daily risk exposure of $19,654 when the CISO seat is vacant.
The average time to fill a CISO role is 6–9 months (≈ 225 days). At that pace, the Company’s cumulative risk exposure would exceed $4.4M before the new CISO starts.
Hitch Partners’ average time to fill a CISO role is just 89 days, restoring leadership 139 days sooner vs the Industry Average and avoiding ≈ $2.5M in exposure.

⬇️ Follow the link below to calculate your company’s risk exposure and see how quickly Hitch can restore leadership.

Hitch Partners 🛡️ CISO Vacancy Risk Calculator (VRC)

Methodology

These projections are based on independent industry research, risk-weighted benchmarks from 600+ global organizations, and breach cost modeling. They reflect probable financial exposure built from real-world data.

Introducing

Hitch Ignite

&

Hitch Ignite Compass

Finding top security talent just got smarter. Our AI-powered recruiting service helps CISOs build elite teams faster, leveraging our executive search expertise to deliver the right hires with precision. Click here for more information about Hitch Ignite & Hitch Ignite Compass.