Bill Bonney, Matt Stamper, and Gary Hayslip met in the summer of 2014 as members of the very inclusive and collaborative cybersecurity community of San Diego, California. Besides being the eighth largest city in the U.S. and a very welcoming community, San Diego is home to several pockets of technological innovation. These include very successful biotechnology, life sciences, and mobile technology industries; a plethora of defense contractors and aerospace research companies; a blossoming startup community in the Internet of Things (IoT) and Cybersecurity; and a thriving academic environment. San Diego is also home to the fewest number of "Fortune 500" company headquarters, per capita, in the U. S. Each of the authors has enjoyed over 30 years of success in the Information Technology field, but they have very different backgrounds.

It became obvious as they got to know each other by participating on panels and speaking at industry events that these different backgrounds brought diverse and complementary perspectives to the problems the cybersecurity community currently faces. What started as a panel discussion on the role of the modern CISO sparked such a lively audience discussion that the authors began to consider turning into a book for new CISOs and CISOs at mid-size firms in particular.