What is CISO Games and Why did we create it?
Community
Two servants leaders. One call. A concept born before the conversation ended. Here is how CISO Games went from an idea nobody had tried to the tournament the cybersecurity industry didn't know it was waiting for.
Dear CISO,
You have been working damn hard for a long time.
You get the 3am call. You answer for breaches you didn't cause. You sit in boardrooms explaining threats to people who have decided they don't want to understand them. You defend hospitals. Power grids. Banks. Schools. Infrastructure that entire populations depend on, and most of those populations don't know your name, your title, or what it costs you to do what you do.
The average CISO lasts 26 months in the role. Not because they aren't good enough. Because the weight is unsustainable and the support is almost nonexistent. Because the industry that needs you most has built an entire economy around selling things to you, and almost nothing around taking care of you.
The burnout numbers are not abstract. They are your colleagues. Some of them are you.
Let's talk about what this job actually does to a person.
Ten to twelve hours a day in front of a screen. Cortisol levels that never fully come down. A nervous system that is permanently calibrated to threat detection - at work, at home, in the middle of dinner, at 3am when the phone lights up. You are trained to absorb pressure, suppress reaction, and keep moving. The job demands it. The role was designed around someone who could do it indefinitely.
Nobody can do it indefinitely.
The mental toll is documented. The physical toll is quieter but just as real. Long hours of sedentary work. Chronic stress that lives in the body long after the incident is resolved. A professional identity so consuming that the question of what you do for yourself - for your health, for your joy, for the part of you that existed before the title - gets harder and harder to answer.
The security community has produced op-eds about burnout. Surveys about burnout. LinkedIn posts about burnout. It has produced almost nothing that actually addresses the underlying human need:
A physical outlet. A mental release. A place to put the energy that has nowhere else to go.
That is what CISO Games was built to be.
Cecil Pineda, our co-founder, has been in this community for 34 years.
He has watched peers burn out, get blamed for things outside their control, and disappear quietly after tenures that should have been celebrated. He has sat at the tables where the conversations happen and felt the weight that everyone in the room was carrying but nobody was naming.
And he kept asking the same question:
Where is the program that exists just for us? Not to extract our attention. Not to put us on a panel so a vendor can say a CISO was in the room. For us. As people. As human beings who need an outlet, a community, and something to compete for that has nothing to do with incident response.
Dani Woolf, our second co-founder, has spent over 15 years in the IT space building relationships with over a thousand security leaders - not from a vendor list, but from showing up, producing, and genuinely listening. She has watched what happens when someone finally makes a CISO feel seen. The way they light up. The way they lean in. The way they stay after the event ends because they don't want the feeling to stop.
She kept asking the same question Cecil was asking. They had known each other for years and both of them knew, long before the conversation happened, that when they finally built something together it would be for the community. Not for the market. For the people.
Their conversation went somewhere neither of them expected.
Cecil said something out loud that he had been sitting with for years:
What if CISOs competed? Like, actually competed and did sports together? Jerseys. Medals. A bracket. A crowd that came to see them win.
Dani bought the domain before the call ended.
Not because it was a good idea - though it is. Because after years of working alongside this community, watching it give everything and receive so little in return, it was the first (second, actually) idea either of them had encountered that matched the size of what they both felt needed to exist.
Something meaningful. Something built for the people, not around them. Something that would still matter in ten years.
A program that would champion the people who have earned the right to feel like they won something and who desperately need a place to channel everything the job puts into them.
That is what CISO Games is.
A quarterly Tournament of Champions where security leaders play and compete. Eight teams. Five athletes each. One tournament day. Real physical and mental challenges. A bracket that gets seeded and a medal ceremony at the end of the day where someone wins and a check goes to charity in their name.
The Games are designed so that the mountain biker and the chef and the person who just walks their dog every morning all have a role. You do not need to be the fastest person in the room. You need to be willing to show up, push something heavy, solve something hard, and give everything you have for the people on your team. That is the whole ask.
And in the process of doing that - in the effort, the laughter, the competition, the physical exercise, the team huddle before The Games start - something happens that no conference has ever produced. You decompress. Genuinely. Completely. In a way that a panel or a steak dinner never could provide you.
The Games are the mechanism.
The mission is more urgent than any format we could design.
The security industry has produced an enormous infrastructure for talking about CISOs, writing about CISOs, and selling to CISOs. It has produced almost nothing for taking care of them. For saying, clearly and publicly and without an agenda:
Your health matters. Your joy matters. The person behind the title matters.
CISO Games exists to correct that. One tournament at a time. One jersey at a time. One medal ceremony at a time.
We are not building another event. We are building the outlet the community has needed for years and nobody thought to create, where the people who defend everything finally get to put that energy somewhere that gives something back.
Because you deserve that. Every single day. Whether or not anyone has told you.
What You Get When You Compete.
For your body.
A full day of physical competition designed for every fitness level - not just the athletes in the room
Movement that breaks the cycle of ten-hour sedentary workdays and chronic desk stress
A structured physical outlet for the cortisol and tension that accumulates in a high-stakes role
Optional pre-season training community to prepare alongside other athletes in your city
For your mind.
Mental challenges embedded inside every physical game - strategy, sequencing, memory, and decision-making
A complete context switch from the threat landscape you live in every day
The psychological reset that only comes from playfully competing for something that has nothing to do with incident response
A day where your brain is fully present because the stakes are real and the outcome is earned
For your emotions.
The experience of being celebrated - loudly, publicly, and without an agenda - for who you are, not what you protect
A medal ceremony that honors every person on the floor, winner or not
A charity donation made in your name, to a cause you chose, in front of a crowd that watched you earn it
The specific feeling of being part of a team that chose you, competed with you, and stood next to you at the end of the day
For your community.
A team of peers who become something more than contacts - because you went through something real together
Access to a network of CISO Games athletes across every season, every city, and every tournament
A permanent place in the CISO Games alumni community - a record that you showed up and competed
Hall of Fame eligibility for champions and standout competitors across multiple seasons
For your legacy.
A competition jersey with your name on the back - yours to keep permanently and wear whenever you want
Custom engraved Gold, Silver, or Bronze medal with your season and year marked
Your full tournament footage - every match, every reaction, every medal moment - delivered within 10 business days
A Hall of Fame induction if you compete across multiple seasons and leave your mark on the community
For the cause.
A charity donation in your team's name if you win Gold - doubled live on stage by the Charity Match Sponsor
A contribution to the season-long charity total announced publicly after the Q4 Championship regardless of result
The knowledge that your participation put real money into real causes, chosen by the people who competed for them
Come play.
CISO Games launches in Dallas Summer of 2026. Athlete applications are now open.
