Bill Sieglein works with CISOExecNet, which brings chief information security officers together with cybersecurity vendors in regional roundtables. His posts describe moderating discussions, gathering members’ views on issues such as AI governance and identity security, and encouraging vendors to listen before presenting.
Most useful for moderated regional roundtables that connect cybersecurity vendors with US CISOs.
Best for
A cybersecurity marketing agency helping a vendor improve engagement and messaging with US CISOs.
Not for
EMEA or APAC demand pushes, scripted demos, cold paid distribution, or fast lead targets.
Key takeaways
He compares vendor outreach to active sonar that gives away a ship's position.
A sponsor set aside slides after hearing nearly 45 members describe identity security challenges.
Pittsburgh and Philadelphia poll: vulnerability management led expected AI impact at 41 percent.
Check first: Confirm sponsorship terms, recent roundtable results, and member seniority data.
Main ideas
Cybersecurity vendors should listen before they pitch — the passive sonar argument · A sponsor should answer the room, not read the slides · AI governance and security is the question this community is working through
Audience
about 75 Members at Texas North, Florida, and Southeast roundtables · over 300 CISO members across 11 regional roundtables
Bill Sieglein is known for CISOExecNet’s regional roundtables, where CISO members discuss practical security concerns and vendors hear directly from them.
His posts show him moderating these discussions and arguing that vendors should listen before pitching.
He also recalls helping launch the Pittsburgh chapter of the CSO Breakfast Club about 20 years ago.
Follow his work for examples of what this CISO community is discussing, including AI governance, identity security, and attack-surface management.
Sieglein makes “listen first” concrete.
He compares vendor outreach to active sonar that gives away a ship’s position, then points to a roundtable where sponsor Rotem Lurie set aside prepared slides after hearing nearly 45 members describe identity-security challenges.
He also shares member poll results rather than treating broad predictions as audience insight: in one Pittsburgh and Philadelphia poll, vulnerability management led expected AI impact at 41%, followed by security operations at 32%.
These examples show both the behavior he encourages—responding to what people actually say—and the kind of evidence his posts offer.
The supplied work centers on CISOExecNet and its events; it does not establish a broader body of signature work beyond that context.
Bill Sieglein's ideas centre on one argument about how cybersecurity vendors should behave and one about what their CISO audience is currently working through.
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The vendor argument is that companies should listen to the market before pitching to it, framed through a naval sonar comparison and reinforced by a named example of a sponsor who set aside prepared slides and answered what members had just said.
The audience argument is that AI governance and security is the live subject across the roundtable series, handled through questions about maturity, expected impact and ownership.
Sieglein's method for surfacing those answers is the live member poll, with results published afterwards as a benchmark vendors can use.
The roundtable programme itself is a travelling regional series whose topic rotates with the schedule, and the posts place it at the end of a roughly twenty-year run in the same community.
Cybersecurity vendors should listen before they pitch — the passive sonar argument
Bill Sieglein's central argument to the vendors who sponsor CISOExecNet roundtables is that most cybersecurity companies broadcast at the market instead of listening to it.
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The reasoning rests on a comparison: active sonar sends out a ping that reveals your position, so navies moved away from it, while passive sonar listens only and leaves the other side unaware of where you are.
Sieglein applies the same logic to the thousands of cybersecurity vendors, saying they spend their time pinging while doing very little listening, and that member CISOs will say honestly what they need and have budget for — which Sieglein calls the most valuable thing a vendor can learn.
The post states that CISOExecNet coaches its sponsors toward the listening approach, and that the organisation has fostered it for the past twenty years.
The comparison comes from a conversation with Andy Land, a former US Naval officer who served on the USS Nicholson, a Spruance-class destroyer.
Andy Land explained that the US Navy moved away from active sonar on ships and submarines in the 1950s because the ping gave away the vessel's location to the enemy, potentially before the returning echo arrived.
The post shows a passive sonar array on a naval hull and closes on the line 'Listen first, ping later.'
The twenty-year claim appears twice in the reviewed posts: the sonar post says the listening-first approach has been fostered for that long, and a roundtable recap recalls launching the Pittsburgh chapter of the CSO Breakfast Club in Reed Smith's law offices twenty years earlier. Both statements come from the posts themselves.
A sponsor should answer the room, not read the slides
Sieglein draws a line between two ways a vendor can spend a sponsor slot.
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A bullhorn pushes a fixed message at members; a walkie-talkie listens first and responds to what was said.
The reasoning is that members have already described their problems in the room, so a vendor who uses that material becomes relevant immediately, while a vendor who ignores it does not.
Sieglein treats the behaviour as something sponsors can learn and calls it out publicly when it happens.
At the Mountain West roundtable in Denver, sponsor Rotem Lurie listened while nearly 45 members described their identity security challenges.
When it came time to present, Rotem Lurie set the prepared slides aside and spoke to what the members had said.
Sieglein describes this as responding with a walkie-talkie rather than a bullhorn and notes that members responded with great interest.
The same set of posts shows a Pennsylvania sponsor session on AI governance and security delivered by Joshua Weinick, with no indication that its content was changed in the room. The listening behaviour is what Sieglein singles out for praise rather than a condition every sponsor session visibly meets.
AI governance and security is the question this community is working through
Across the posts, AI governance and security is the subject Sieglein returns to most.
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It is handled at three levels: how mature an organisation's governance and controls are, where AI is expected to have the greatest positive impact on a security programme over the next two to three years, and who inside a company should own governance. Sieglein presents the topic as something members are still working out together rather than a settled practice, which is why it keeps appearing as a roundtable theme and a poll subject.
A Great Lakes roundtable on AI governance and security included a legal update from Columbus chapter host Chris Ingram and contributions from sponsors Samuel Hill of MIND and Ido Geffen of Novee Security; Sieglein reports that the question 'Who should be leading AI Governance at your firm?' came up during the day. The same theme ran through roughly 75 members from the Texas North, Florida and Southeast regions, and Sieglein notes members' concerns around AI governance and security from the New England, Northeast and Pennsylvania sessions.
Member polls turn roundtable answers into a shareable benchmark
Sieglein asks members multiple-choice questions during roundtables and publishes the results afterwards with an invitation for readers to compare their own situation.
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The reasoning is that the answers give vendors a factual picture of what this buyer group prioritises, rather than a vendor's assumption about it. The published percentages are the kind of specific evidence a vendor can cite, and the question wording is reusable.
A Pennsylvania roundtable asked where members from Pittsburgh and Philadelphia expect AI to have the greatest positive impact on their cybersecurity programme over the next two to three years.
The results were vulnerability management 41%, security operations 32%, data protection (DSPM/DLP) 14%, identity and access management 9%, and threat detection and response 4%.
A separate series poll asked about AI governance maturity, with options running from mature formal governance to just starting, and about where AI will help most.
Roundtable topics follow the regional schedule, not a fixed curriculum
The programme Sieglein describes is a moderated, in-person format repeated across regions, with the topic changing as the series moves.
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One stretch of the calendar covered identity security; the next was announced as visibility and management of attack surface, security posture and exposure. The reasoning behind the format is that members share current problems with peers in the same region, with law firm hosts adding a legal update at some sessions and sponsors taking part.
Sieglein recaps a month of travel across 11 regional roundtables with more than 300 member CISOs, welcomes the newest Sacramento group, and announces the closing series on attack surface, security posture and exposure. Regions named across the posts include New England, Northeast, Pennsylvania, Texas North, Florida, Southeast, Great Lakes, Mountain West in Denver and Sacramento, and Sieglein names the team as Andy Land, Bernadette Valdez, George Vittori and Alec Alenstein.
This is the clearest single explanation of what Bill Sieglein means by listening-first.
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A newcomer should start here because the sonar analogy frames the advisory approach behind everything else in the posts.
Bill Sieglein contrasts active sonar, which sends out a ping and reveals your location, with passive sonar, which only listens.
The post retells a conversation with Andy Land, a former US Naval officer, who explained that navies moved away from active sonar in the 1950s because the enemy could hear the ping and find you before you found them.
Sieglein uses that story to argue that too many cybersecurity vendors spend their time pinging the market with messages while doing very little listening.
He says CISOExecNet coaches sponsors to listen first because member CISOs will tell the truth about what they need, want, and have budget for.
For brands planning a campaign
A vendor campaign can use this post as a ready-made case for discovery-led messaging: build the first touch around a listening mechanism such as a roundtable, interview, or survey, then let what members say shape the campaign's claims and follow-up content.
This answers what a successful vendor engagement looks like in practice, not just in theory.
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Start here for a concrete example of the listening-first principle Sieglein describes elsewhere.
At the Mountain West roundtable in Denver, sponsor Rotem Lurie listened while nearly 45 members described their identity security challenges.
When it was Rotem Lurie's turn to present, they set aside the prepared slides and spoke directly to what the members had said.
Sieglein calls this a two-way walkie-talkie approach rather than a bullhorn and says members responded with great interest.
The post shows the specific behavior Sieglein rewards: a vendor adjusting a presentation in the room based on member input.
For brands planning a campaign
A campaign can be built around a live event moment like this by capturing or summarizing member concerns first, then having the vendor respond to those concerns in follow-up content rather than using a fixed pitch.
This answers what this specific CISO community currently prioritizes, using a defined poll rather than generic predictions.
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A campaign planner should open it for a quick data point from the roundtable audience.
The post reports a poll of CISOExecNet members from Pittsburgh and Philadelphia on where they expect AI to have the greatest positive impact on their cybersecurity programs over the next two to three years.
Vulnerability management received 41%, security operations 32%, data protection 14%, identity and access management 9%, and threat detection and response 4%.
Sieglein also thanks BlinkOps for sponsorship and notes that Joshua Weinick presented on AI governance and security.
For brands planning a campaign
A vendor addressing this audience can use the percentages to prioritize messaging: lead with vulnerability management and security operations if the product fits, and avoid assuming threat detection is the top AI concern for this group.
This answers how long Bill Sieglein has been building this network and what a typical roundtable week includes.
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Start here for the origin story and the mix of sponsors, host law firms, and member discussions.
Bill Sieglein recalls moderating roundtables in the New England, Northeast, and Pennsylvania regions and remembers launching the Pittsburgh chapter of the CSO Breakfast Club in Reed Smith's law offices 20 years earlier.
The post names sponsors Bold Security, Legit Security, Sentra, Upwind Security, and BlinkOps, and host attorneys Linn Freedman and Michael Oliverio.
Sieglein says the discussions focused on members' concerns about AI governance and security.
For brands planning a campaign
The 20-year history is a trust signal for the community's longevity, but a campaign should match the listening-first format the community expects rather than treating the history as permission for a broadcast pitch.
This answers what the current roundtable series covers and who is involved.
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It is a useful starting point for understanding the recurring AI governance theme and the sponsor roster.
The post describes the fifth regional roundtable series of the year, focused on AI governance and security, with about 75 members from Texas North, Florida, and Southeast regions.
Two polls asked how mature organizations are in AI governance and where AI will have the greatest positive impact over the next two to three years.
Sieglein lists sponsors MIND, Legit Security, Novee Security, TELUS Digital, and BlinkOps, and host attorneys Shawn Tuma, Alex Koskey, and Jade Davis.
For brands planning a campaign
A vendor can see which topics and sponsors are already part of the AI governance conversation in this community. A campaign about AI governance can use this post to understand the existing room and which sponsors have already aligned with it.
This answers how large the roundtable program is and what it will cover next.
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Start here for a quick sense of the program's reach and its upcoming agenda.
Bill Sieglein recaps a month of travel across 11 CISOExecNet regional roundtables with more than 300 member CISOs.
The post welcomes the newest Sacramento crew and announces that the next series will focus on visibility and management of attack surface, security posture, and exposure.
Sieglein thanks the CISOExecNet team: Andy Land, Bernadette Valdez, George Vittori, and Alec Alenstein.
For brands planning a campaign
A campaign planned around attack surface or exposure management can align with the community's next scheduled theme and cite the scale of the audience when proposing a roundtable-based engagement.
Sponsor contributions expected to teach, not broadcast5
AI governance and security as the recurring roundtable theme4
Two decades of convening the same community3
Vendor coaching: listen first, pitch later2
Live polls turned into shareable benchmark data2
Identity security, attack surface and exposure2
Vendor coaching: listen first, pitch later
Two posts make the same argument to cybersecurity vendors: ask and listen before presenting.
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One uses active versus passive sonar as the frame, recalling that navies moved away from active pinging because the signal gives away your position, and likens vendors that broadcast to the market to active sonar.
The other praises a sponsor who listened to roughly 45 members describe identity security challenges at a Denver roundtable, then set aside prepared slides and answered what members had actually said.
Sieglein describes coaching CISOExecNet sponsors to take the listening approach.
Analogy-led teaching: a naval sonar comparison, then a named example of the behaviour he wants.
The vendor examples come from roundtable sponsor slots that Sieglein's organisation runs, not from open-market vendor campaigns.
For brands planning a campaign
An agency working on vendor messaging can build a campaign around questions gathered from buyers rather than the vendor's own product narrative. The practical route is to collect member concerns in the room, answer those concerns in follow-up content, and show the answer the way the praised Denver presentation did.
AI governance and security as the recurring roundtable theme
AI governance and security is the subject Sieglein returns to most in these posts.
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It runs through the fifth regional roundtable series of the year, a Great Lakes session, a Pennsylvania session where a sponsor spoke on the topic, and a post reflecting on member concerns. The posts show the topic handled at three levels: how mature an organisation's governance is, where AI will help most, and who inside a company should own governance.
For brands planning a campaign
For a cybersecurity client, AI governance is the live question in this community. An agency can frame content around ownership, maturity and expected impact instead of general AI commentary, using the roundtable discussions as the briefing for a campaign angle.
Roundtables include member polls, and results are published afterwards.
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One set asked how mature member organisations are on AI governance and where AI will help most.
Results from Pittsburgh and Philadelphia members put vulnerability management first at 41%, security operations at 32%, data protection at 14%, identity and access management at 9%, and threat detection and response at 4%.
Another post reports about 75 members across three regions taking part.
Multiple-choice poll questions asked live, with member answers published and readers invited to compare their own.
For brands planning a campaign
Polling gives an agency a repeatable content device: question design, in-room collection, and a published benchmark vendors can reference. The published percentages are the kind of specific evidence that supports a claim in campaign material.
A Denver roundtable centred on identity security challenges, with members sharing what they were facing before a sponsor responded. A later post announces the closing series on visibility and management of attack surface, security posture and exposure.
For brands planning a campaign
Agencies can time client content to the subjects the community is already discussing, placing identity material alongside one series and exposure or posture material alongside the next, rather than publishing on an unrelated calendar.
The format is a moderated, in-person roundtable repeated across regions.
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Posts name New England, Northeast, Pennsylvania, Texas North, Florida, Southeast, Great Lakes, Mountain West in Denver, and a new Sacramento group.
One post reports 11 roundtables and more than 300 member CISOs in a month.
Law firm hosts give legal updates at some sessions, and the sessions are run with a small team Sieglein names, including Andy Land, Bernadette Valdez, George Vittori and Alec Alenstein.
Moderated discussion hosted in law firm offices and other venues, with sponsor participation and legal updates.
For brands planning a campaign
A national vendor campaign can be planned around the regional calendar, with city-specific content and sponsorship instead of a single generic push. The recurring city list also shows where an agency can expect concentrated CISO attendance.
Sponsor contributions expected to teach, not broadcast
Sponsors are named and thanked, and the posts also show what is expected of them.
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A Pennsylvania sponsor's speaker presented on AI governance; a Denver sponsor listened first and then answered member issues without slides. Sieglein's stated preference is for sponsors to behave like a two-way conversation rather than a bullhorn.
The posts name sponsors and hosts but do not describe sponsorship pricing, format terms, or what a vendor must supply beyond the session itself.
For brands planning a campaign
Sponsorship here appears to come with an expectation of substantive, responsive contribution. An agency preparing a sponsored session should plan for a listening phase, live tailoring, and follow-up content that shows what the vendor heard.
The posts place the current roundtables at the end of a long run.
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One recalls launching the Pittsburgh chapter of the CSO Breakfast Club at Reed Smith's offices 20 years ago; another says the listening-first approach has been fostered for 20 years. The community has since grown into a multi-region series that still presents itself as bringing value to US CISOs and the vendors that sponsor the roundtables.
The twenty-year history is described in the posts themselves; the supplied materials contain no independent record of the earlier events or their dates.
For brands planning a campaign
The long history supports positioning Sieglein as an established convener with sustained member relationships rather than a newcomer commenting on the market. Campaign material can lean on continuity and the trust that comes with a long-standing room.
Bill Sieglein writes from the CISOExecNet account, where the brands that appear most often are the vendors sponsoring CISOExecNet regional roundtables on AI governance, identity security, and attack-surface management.
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The reviewed posts name BlinkOps, Legit Security, MIND, Novee Security, TELUS Digital, Bold Security, Sentra, and Upwind Security as roundtable sponsors, and credit host law firms for individual sessions. The posts do not state Bill Sieglein's exact role at CISOExecNet, so the relationship is presented as unstated rather than as ownership or employment.
CISOExecNet
Disclosed partnership
The reviewed posts are published from the CISOExecNet account and speak as part of the organization — coaching sponsors, moderating regional roundtables, and reporting member poll results.
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The posts do not say whether Bill Sieglein owns or is employed by CISOExecNet, so the specific relationship remains unstated. The account description lists the roundtable series as running for 20 years.
Named as a sponsor of CISOExecNet regional roundtables in several posts, including the Pennsylvania roundtable and the Texas North, Florida, and Southeast sessions on AI governance and security.
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At the Pennsylvania roundtable, Joshua Weinick spoke to members on AI governance.
Original disclosure
Grateful for the sponsorship from BlinkOps at our Pennsylvania Regional Roundtable.
Listed as a sponsor of CISOExecNet regional roundtables in two posts: the New England, Northeast, and Pennsylvania sessions, and the AI governance and security series held in the Texas North, Florida, and Southeast regions.
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Original disclosure
Thanks to our sponsors last week Bold Security, Legit Security, Sentra, Upwind Security, and BlinkOps.
The security vendor MIND, represented in the posts by Samuel Hill, is listed as a sponsor of the CISOExecNet Great Lakes roundtable and of the AI governance and security series across the Texas North, Florida, and Southeast regions.
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Original disclosure
Appreciate the legal update from our Columbus Chapter host Chris Ingram and our sponsors Samuel Hill MIND and Ido Geffen Novee Security.
Novee Security, represented in the posts by Ido Geffen, sponsors the CISOExecNet Great Lakes roundtable and appears among the sponsors of the AI governance and security series in the Texas North, Florida, and Southeast regions.
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Original disclosure
Appreciate the legal update from our Columbus Chapter host Chris Ingram and our sponsors Samuel Hill MIND and Ido Geffen Novee Security.
Named among the sponsors of the CISOExecNet AI governance and security roundtables held in the Texas North, Florida, and Southeast regions, which drew about 75 member CISOs.
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Original disclosure
Thanks to our sponsors MIND, Legit Security, Novee Security, TELUS Digital, and BlinkOps.
Linn Freedman of Blank Rome LLP is credited as a host attorney for the CISOExecNet New England, Northeast, and Pennsylvania roundtables, placing the firm alongside the roundtable sessions Bill Sieglein moderated.
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No commercial terms are described.
Original disclosure
Thanks also to our host attorneys Linn Freedman, Blank Rome LLP, and Michael Oliverio
A retrospective post recalls launching the Pittsburgh chapter of the CSO Breakfast Club in the Reed Smith law offices about 20 years ago, which the post illustrates with a photo of the lighted building.
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Historical venue mention, not a current commercial relationship.
Bill Sieglein's post looks back on the early days of the CSO Breakfast Club and the launch of its Pittsburgh chapter 20 years ago, framing it as part of the same CISO community work that continues through the roundtables.
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The posts do not state a current role or commercial terms.
Bill Sieglein is best followed through CISOExecNet's roundtable recaps, where two threads run in parallel.
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One is advice to cybersecurity vendors: listen to the buyer community before presenting to it, illustrated by the passive-sonar comparison and by a Denver sponsor who set aside prepared slides and answered what members had just said.
The other is what that community is currently working through, mainly AI governance and security, identity security, and attack surface and exposure management, with live member polls published afterwards as numbers a vendor can use.
Readers who want the substance should start with the sonar post and the walkie-talkie post, then the poll results, and treat the regional recaps as the running record of where the series goes next.
Both teach through a documented, hands-on workflow rather than general commentary.
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Sieglein walks through what a roundtable sponsor actually did when the room gave them material, and Schmitz walks through building an internal tool in NetSuite, including the prompt used and the human review and deployment steps that followed.
Schmitz works inside a company's own systems, on CRM reporting, lead-status analysis and AI-assisted tool building, for NetSuite and marketing-operations practitioners. Sieglein's material looks outward at how vendors should behave toward an enterprise security buyer community.
Both build an argument from outcomes they observed and then draw the lesson for the reader.
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Liu reports clients moving from stalled careers to promotions and from undercharging to launching products, and uses that to argue against passive-income thinking. Sieglein reports a sponsor who answered member concerns and uses that to argue against broadcasting at the market.
Liu's audience is individual senior technologists weighing career optionality, and the advice is personal and coaching-led. Sieglein's is an enterprise security buyer community, and the advice is aimed at vendors and sponsors.
Both use their own working calendar and client work as the teaching material, and both build visibility through recurring in-person business events.
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Sagar posts a diary of client onboardings, chamber and Entrepreneurs Circle meetings and talks, and Sieglein posts a running account of roundtables and what happened in the room.
Sagar advises small and service businesses in the UK on CRM, AI leverage and business constraints, alongside a strong personal-brand and broadcast presence. Sieglein convenes US enterprise security leaders and addresses himself mainly to cybersecurity vendors.
For a cybersecurity vendor engagement campaign aimed at US CISOs, Bill Sieglein’s documented audience is most relevant at the roundtable level: the posts show regional CISOExecNet roundtables convening CISO members and sponsors, with member counts given for some events.
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The LinkedIn account listed 11,256 followers when observed on 2026-10-11, but the supplied evidence does not measure the composition of that follower base.
The posts show content appeal and event participation, not verified audience demographics such as employer, occupation, or job seniority.
Buyer next step: ask Bill Sieglein for recent results from comparable roundtables (topic, region, member count, seniority mix, sponsor outcomes) and for any audience survey or documented member-title data.
That evidence would answer whether the audience matches a client brief; follower count alone would not.
Members at Texas North, Florida, and Southeast roundtables
about 75
Bill Sieglein post on CISOExecNet AI governance and security roundtables · not stated in supplied post
CISO members across 11 regional roundtables
over 300
Bill Sieglein post on CISOExecNet travel and Sacramento roundtable · not stated in supplied post
Members at Mountain West roundtable in Denver
nearly 45
Bill Sieglein post on CISOExecNet identity security roundtable · 2026-09-17
CISOExecNet, which Bill Sieglein represents in the reviewed posts, sells vendor participation in its regional CISO roundtable series.
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Sponsors support roundtables and gain access to member chief information security officers through event sponsorship and, in at least one described case, a speaking slot.
The operating expectation Sieglein emphasizes is listening-first engagement: sponsors should hear member concerns before presenting, adapt to what members say, and avoid a broadcast-style pitch.
Named sponsors across the reviewed posts include BlinkOps, MIND, Legit Security, Novee Security, TELUS Digital, Bold Security, Sentra, and Upwind Security.
The posts show sponsorship activity but do not include a sponsor policy, rate card, contract terms, or an official partnership inquiry page.
Regional roundtable sponsorship
Buyer requirement
Budget for sponsorship of one or more CISOExecNet regional roundtables and coordinate with the series calendar.
The reviewed posts name sponsors across regions including Texas North, Florida, Southeast, New England, Northeast, Pennsylvania, Mountain West, Great Lakes, and Sacramento.
Sponsors are acknowledged alongside host law firms, and the roundtable topics in the reviewed examples include AI governance and security, identity security, attack surface visibility, security posture, and exposure management.
Sponsored vendor presentation or member engagement slot
Buyer requirement
Send a representative who can listen to member CISOs first and then speak to the issues members actually raise, rather than delivering a fixed slide pitch.
One reviewed post describes a sponsor who discarded slides and responded directly to nearly 45 members’ identity security challenges; Sieglein presents that as the preferred “walkie-talkie” approach instead of a “bullhorn.”
A buyer planning this format should prepare for live adaptation, not a scripted product presentation.
A B2B cybersecurity marketing agency wants to improve a vendor client's engagement and messaging with US CISOs — essentially the brief this profile was commissioned against.
Reasons
The method matches the ask. Bill Sieglein's clearest teaching is that vendors should listen before pitching: the sonar post argues that broadcasting to the market gives away your position and that CISOExecNet coaches sponsors to listen first, then talk. The Denver example shows what that looks like in practice — a sponsor heard roughly 45 members describe identity security challenges, set the slides aside, and answered what members actually raised. An agency trying to fix a client's messaging has a named behaviour to copy, not a slogan.
There is a room to listen in. The posts describe a travelling series of moderated roundtables across US regions, including New England, Northeast, Pennsylvania, Texas North, Florida, Southeast, Great Lakes, Mountain West in Denver, and a new Sacramento group. One post reports 11 roundtables and more than 300 member CISOs in a single month; another reports about 75 members across three regions. For an agency, that is a route to hearing buyer objections directly instead of guessing at them.
Polling is a repeatable content device. Roundtables are used to ask members defined multiple-choice questions and the answers are published afterwards. The Pennsylvania and Philadelphia results put vulnerability management first at 41%, security operations at 32%, data protection at 14%, identity and access management at 9%, and threat detection and response at 4%. That is the kind of specific, attributable number an agency can build campaign material around rather than generic AI commentary.
There are timing hooks. AI governance and security is the subject the posts return to most, handled at the level of governance maturity, expected impact, and internal ownership. A later post announces the next series on attack surface visibility, security posture, and exposure. An agency can line client content up with what this community is already discussing.
The engagement model itself carries the lesson. Sponsors are named and thanked, and the posts show what is expected of them: substantive, responsive contribution. A client whose problem is broadcast-style messaging is being asked to change exactly the behaviour the posts criticise.
The history supports positioning. A post recalls launching the Pittsburgh CSO Breakfast Club chapter in a law firm's offices 20 years earlier, and another says the listening-first approach has been fostered for 20 years. That continuity is what makes the room worth listening in.
Gaps that would change the decision
The posts name sponsors and hosts but give no sponsorship policy, rate card, contract terms, or official inquiry route, so a buyer cannot budget or book from the evidence supplied.
No evidence shows lead volume, pipeline, or conversion outcomes from a sponsor slot. Sponsorship acknowledgements show participation, not results.
Member counts are stated in the posts but seniority mix, employer list, and decision-making authority are not verified anywhere in the reviewed material.
When to choose a specialist
Not a fit for the evidence reviewed.
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Brief
A cybersecurity vendor targeting EMEA and APAC buyers wants a fast, scripted product-led demand push: fixed demo messaging, distribution to a large cold audience on paid channels, and lead targets within a few weeks, with no in-person events.
Reasons
The documented audience is US regional roundtables. Nothing in the reviewed posts shows buyers outside the United States, and the regions named are all American.
The documented commercial format is event sponsorship and a member-engagement slot. There is no evidence of paid distribution, cold-audience reach, content syndication, or any product that would deliver a broad top-of-funnel push.
The behaviour the posts reward is the opposite of a scripted demo. A working session is praised precisely because the sponsor discarded prepared slides and answered what members had said; the sonar post criticises vendors that broadcast. A fixed script sent to a cold list is the bullhorn pattern this evidence argues against.
Timing does not line up. The series runs to a regional and thematic calendar — one post describes closing out the year on attack surface, security posture, and exposure, and hitting the road again the following week. A short, calendar-independent paid push has no natural place in it.
Nothing in the reviewed material reports lead volume, MQLs, or conversion outcomes from sponsor participation, so the lead-target part of the brief cannot be assessed from this evidence at all.
Pricing, sponsor obligations, approval steps, and any contact route are absent from the reviewed material, so this brief also cannot be planned or costed from what is supplied.
A worked campaign example
Angle
Run the campaign as a listening exercise before a single claim is made — the passive sonar approach — and time it to the community's next series theme, attack surface visibility, security posture, and exposure.
Client situation
An agency client sells exposure management and attack surface visibility software. The client's problem is that its outbound messaging leads with product capability and CISOs do not engage with it.
Steps
Start with questions, not a pitch. Before any outreach, gather member concerns on attack surface and exposure using the same structure the roundtables already use: a small set of multiple-choice questions asked of people in the room, plus open discussion where members describe what they are actually facing. The identity security session in Denver is the model — members spoke first and the sponsor responded.
Turn the answers into the campaign's evidence. Publish what members said in the same shape as the existing poll results, so the client's content carries a benchmark rather than a claim. The published percentages from the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia session show how a simple poll becomes material a vendor can cite.
Send someone who will adapt. Prepare the client's representative for live tailoring rather than a fixed deck: they should hear the member discussion and then answer the concerns raised, including dropping prepared material if it does not match. That is the behaviour the walkie-talkie post singles out for praise.
Keep the vendor attached to the community's questions. Follow-up content should show what was heard and how the client responded, not restart the product script. The recurring AI governance theme — governance maturity, expected impact, who should own it — is a second ready-made topic if the client's roadmap touches it.
Measure what can actually be measured with this evidence, and ask for the rest. The client can track its own follow-up content engagement and the pre/post change in the questions asked in the room. Attendance, seniority mix, and any sponsor outcome data must be requested from Bill Sieglein's side, because none of that is in the reviewed material.
Request the missing commercial detail early. Ask for sponsorship pricing, the application or approval process, what the vendor is expected to supply beyond the session, and the correct contact route. None of these appear in the reviewed posts, so they are open questions rather than settled terms.
Choose Caleb Schmitz when the campaign problem is the client's own marketing and sales machinery rather than the conversation with CISOs.
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The two posts show an internal NetSuite administrator building a "Pipeline Allocation Manager": a saved search of each rep's active pipeline is turned into a live report, first as an HTML mockup generated from a screenshot of the old Excel sheet, then converted into a working NetSuite Suitelet after a few rounds of layout changes.
A second post shows the same tool used to explain a KPI that looked wrong — a dip in leads after a new marketing-qualified and sales-qualified lead status was introduced on 1 April — and then reused to build an interactive, filterable report the CEO could check.
If the client's problem is misleading pipeline stages, manual weekly reporting, or leadership asking for numbers nobody can defend, this is the more relevant reference, and the posts include the exact prompt used so the workflow can be copied.
None of this touches CISO audiences or security buying.
The material is CRM administration, automation, and sales-and-marketing reporting for a NetSuite user, so it can clean up the client's funnel data but gives the agency nothing to say to a security leader, no route into a buyer room, and no security-community credibility.
The results are also described by the person who did the work, with no audience or outcome data attached, so treat the time savings and the KPI explanation as his own account rather than a measured result.
Consider Daliana Liu when the brief shifts from vendor messaging to a career, visibility, or personal-brand task — for example helping a security practitioner or a security leader get promoted, present to executives, or build a public profile.
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One post lists five things from 2025: five months living in New York after five Asian cities, meeting people only through trusted referrals, treating coaching as a second master's degree because strategy alone does not move people, and watching clients go from frightened of presenting to winning executive buy-in, from stalled careers to senior promotions, and from undercharging to launching products.
The second post argues that the three popular forms of "passive income" — a course, stocks, a small software product — are all active work, and reframes the goal as agency over your time rather than earning without effort.
That is usable material for a brief about a person's positioning and next career move.
The audience is individual tech professionals and senior individual contributors, not enterprise security buyers, and the unit of decision is one person's career rather than a vendor's campaign.
There is no event channel, no CISO access, and no cybersecurity content, so this work cannot support the CISO engagement decision at all.
The 2025 post also runs a Thanksgiving offer bundling about twenty hours of course material and a one-to-one strategy call at $199, which means part of the writing doubles as promotion — using it as neutral teaching needs that separation made explicit.
Pick Daniel Sagar when the decision narrows to small-business growth in the UK, especially a client selling CRM or AI adoption to owner-managed firms that want to stop firefighting.
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A January post lays out a working diary: onboarding a client into an AI CRM, a local Entrepreneurs Circle meeting, a first Pro-Cast session, a chamber of commerce breakfast talk on 2026 strategy and three growth philosophies, a two-day "Business Health Check" event on the twelve vital signs of a successful business, a Barclays Innovation Hub talk on where the money is and how to get it, a HYROX race, and a peer-to-peer board he is building.
A second post, from a radio appearance, lists the themes he speaks on: the difference between being busy and being productive, finding the real constraints in a business, using AI as a leverage tool, keeping a simple CRM with automated follow-ups, and trust as the key asset in the age of AI.
Those formats — local talks, peer boards, radio — are directly transferable if the client's market is nearby small businesses.
The geography and buyer are wrong for the CISO brief.
The audience is UK small-business owners and local business networks rather than US enterprise security leaders, and the subjects are productivity, constraints, cash, and CRM adoption, not cyber risk or governance.
The posts are also mostly a schedule of appearances plus a named CRM and AI platform, so they offer format inspiration and a speaking style rather than evidence about how security buyers behave.
This page draws on seven LinkedIn posts published from the CISOExecNet account and read in full, covering regional roundtable recaps, sponsor and host acknowledgements, member poll results, and advice to cybersecurity vendors.
The material shows the roundtable programme across US regions, the themes members are working through, and a Denver sponsor session where the presenter answered what members had just said instead of reading prepared slides.
No publication dates were supplied with the posts, so sequence and currentness are reported only as the posts state them, and attendance figures, poll percentages and the community's twenty-year history come from the posts themselves with no independent record of the events.
The reviewed material does not include sponsorship pricing, contract terms or an inquiry route, does not verify the seniority or makeup of the member audience, and reports no lead or pipeline outcomes from sponsor participation.
It also contains no broader name-search evidence such as earlier roles, books, shows or businesses outside the CISOExecNet and CSO Breakfast Club context described in the posts.
Recent engagement
Across their last 7 LinkedIn posts, the median post got 21 reactions and 1 comments. Checked 2026-11-02.
