Overview
Join the Elite: Earn Your CCISO and Lead Cybersecurity Strategy.
The EC-Council’s Certified Chief Information Security Officer (CCISO) program has certified leading information security professionals around the world. A core group of high-level information security executives, the C|CISO Advisory Board, formed the foundation of the program and outlined the content covered by the exam, body of knowledge, and training.
Some members of the Board contributed as authors, others as exam writers, others as quality assurance checks, and still others as instructors. Each segment of the program was developed with the aspiring and sitting CISO in mind and looks to transfer the knowledge of seasoned executives to the next generation of leaders in the areas that are most critical in the development and maintenance of a successful information security program
Skills Covered
Please refer to course overview.
Who Should Attend
- Chief Executive Officer
- Managing director
- Chief Information Security Officer
- Chief Information Officer
- Chief Technical Officer
- Chief of informatin Security
- Vice President of Information Security
- Associate vice president
- Information Security Officer
- Chief Compliance Officer
- Regional Chief Information Officer
- Director of Security
- IT Director/Head or equivalent
- IT Manager Data Security
- Director Cloud security
- Head Project Manager
- Delivery Manager
- Security Systems Engineer
- Security Manager
- Security Auditor
- Head of Security Architect
- Head of Network Architect
- Infosec consultant and advisory
- Senior Cyber Security CIO SME
Course Curriculum
Prerequisites
- Domain 1: Governance, Risk, and Compliance
- Domain 2: Information Security Controls and Audit Management
- Domain 3: Security Program Management and Operations
- Domain 4: Information Security Core Competencies
- Domain 5: Strategic Planning, Finance, Procurement
Download Course Syllabus
Course Modules
Governance
- Define, implement, manage and maintain an information security governance program that includes leadership, organizational structures, and processes.
- Align information security governance framework with organizational goals and governance, i.e., leadership style, philosophy, values, standards, and policies.
- Establish information security management structure.
- Establish a framework for information security governance monitoring (considering cost/benefits analyses of controls and ROI).
- Understand standards, procedures, directives, policies, regulations, and legal issues that affect the information security program.
- Understand the enterprise information security compliance prog
Risk Management
- Create a risk management program policy and charter . Create a risk assessment methodology and framework
- Create and manage risk register
- Create risk assessment schedule and checklists
- Create risk reporting metrics and processes
Compliance
- Analyze and understand common external laws, regulations, standards, best practices applicable to the organization, and organizational ethics.
- Be familiar with international security and risk standards such as ISO 27000 and 31000 series
- Implement and manage information security strategies, plans, policies, and procedures to reduce regulatory risk
- Understand the importance of regulatory information security organizations and appropriate industry groups and stakeholders
- Understand information security changes, trends, and best practices
- Understand and manage enterprise compliance program controls, information security compliance process and procedures, compliance auditing, and certification programs
- Understand the information security compliance process and procedures
- Compile, analyze, and report compliance programs
- Understand the compliance auditing and cortication programs
- Follow organizational ethics
Information Security Management Controls
- Identify the organization’s operational process and objectives
- Design information systems controls in alignment with the operational needs and goals and conduct testing prior to implementation to ensure effectiveness
- Identify and select the resources required to effectively implement and maintain information systems controls. Such resources can include human capital, information, infrastructure, and architecture (e.g., platforms, operating systems, networks, databases, applications)
- Design and implement information systems controls to mitigate risk. Monitor and document the information systems control performance in meeting organizational objectives by identifying and measuring metrics and key performance indicators
- Design and conduct testing of information security controls to ensure effectiveness, discover deficiencies, and ensure alignment with the organization’s risk management program
- Design and implement processes to appropriately remediate deficiencies and evaluate problem management practices to ensure that errors are recorded, analyzed, and resolved in a timely manner
- Assess and implement tools and techniques to automate information systems control processes.
- Measure, manage, and report on security control implementation and effectiveness
Audit Management
- Understand the IT audit process and be familiar with IT audit standards
- Apply information systems audit principles, skills and techniques in reviewing and testing information systems technology and applications to design and implement a thorough risk-based IT audit strategy
- Execute the audit process in accordance with established standards and interpret results against defined criteria to ensure that the information systems are protected, controlled and effective in supporting organization’s objectives
- Evaluate audit results, weighing the relevancy, accuracy, and perspective of conclasions against the accumulated audit evidence
- Assess the exposures resulting from ineffective or missing control practices and formulate a practical and cost-effective plan to improve those areas
- Develop an IT audit documentation process and share reports with relevant stakeholders as the basis for decisionmaking
- Ensure that the necessary changes based on the audit findings are effectively implemented in a timely manner
Security Program Management
- For each information systems project develop a clear project scope statement in alignment with organizational objectives
- Define activities needed to successfully execute the information systems program, estimate activity duration, and develop a schedule and staffing plan
- Develop, manage and monitor the information systems program budget, estimate and control costs of individual projects
- Identify, negotiate, acquire and manage the resources needed for successful design and implementation of the information systems program (e.g., people, infrastructure, and architecture)
- Acquire, develop and manage information security project team
- Assign clear information security personnel job functions and provide continuous training to ensure effective performance and accountability
- Direct information security personnel and establish communications, and team activities, between the informatin systems team and other security-related personnel (e.g., technical support, incident management, security engineering)
Security Program Operations
- Resolve personnel and teamwork issues within time, cost, and quality constraints
- Identify, negotiate and manage vendor agreement and community
- Participate with vendors and stakeholders to review/assess recommended solutions; identify incompatibilities, challenges, or issues with proposed solutions
- Evaluate the project management practices and controls to determine whether business requirements are achieved in a cost-effective manner while managing risks to the organization
- Develop a plan to continuously measure the effectiveness of the information systems projects to ensure optimal system performance
- Identify stakeholders, manage stakeholders’ expectations, and communicate effectively to report progress and performance
- Ensure that necessary changes and improvements to the information systems processes are implemented as required
Access Control
- Identify the criteria for mandatory and discretionary access control, understand the different factors that help in implementation of access controls and design an access control plan
- Implement and manage an access control plan in alignment with the basic principles that govern the access control systems such as need-to-know
- Identify different access control systems such as ID cards and biogetrics
- Understand the importance of warning banners for implementing access rules
- Develop procedures to ensure system users are aware of their IA responsibilities before granting access to the information systems
Social Engineering, Phishing Attacks, Identify Theft
- Understand various social engineering concepts and their role in insider attacks and develop best practices to counter social engineering attacks
- Design a response plan to identity theft incidences
- Identify and design a plan to overcome phishing attacks
Physical Security
- Identify standards, procedures, directives, policies, regulations, and laws for physical security
- Determine the value of physical assets and the impact if unavailable
- Design, implement and manage a comprehensive, coordinated, and holistic physical security plan to ensure overall organizational security including an audit schedule and performance metrics
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning
- Develop, implement, and monitor business continuity, business recovery, contingency planning, and disaster recovery plans in case of disruptive events and ensure alignment with organizational goals and objectives
- Direct contingency planning, operations, and programs to manage risk
- Design documentation process as part of the continuity of operations program
- Design and execute a testing and updating plan for the continuity of operations program
- Understand the importance of integration of lA requiremenis into the Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP).
Firewall, IDS/IPS and Network Defense Systems
- Understand and manage network cloud security
- Identify the appropriate intrusion detection and prevention systems for organizational information security
- Design and develop a program to monitor firewalls and identify firewall configuration issues
- Understand perimeter defense systems such as grid sensors and access control lists on routers, firewalls, and other network devices
- Identify the basic network architecture, models, protocols and components such as routers and hubs that play a role in network security
- Understand the concent of network segmentation
Wireless Security
- Identify vulnerability and attacks associated with wireless networks and manage different wireless network security tools
Virus, Trojans and Malware, and other Malicious Code Threats
- Assess the threat of virus, Trojan and malware to organizational security and identify sources and mediums of malware infection
- Deploy and manage anti-virus systems
- Develop process to counter virus, Trojan, and malware threats including training both security teams and non-security teams on secure development processes
Secure Coding Best Practices and Securing Web Applications
- Develop and maintain software assurance programs in alignment with the secure coding principles and each phase of System Development
Cycle (SDLC) - Understand various system-engineering practices
- Configure and run tools that help in developing secure programs
- Understand software vulnerability analysis techniques including static code, dynamic code, and software composition analysis.
- Install and operate the IT systems in a test configuration manner that does not alter the program code or compromise security safeguards
- Identify web application vulnerabilities and attacks and web application security tools to counter attacks
OS Hardening
- Identify various OS vulnerabilities and attacks and develop a plan for hardening OS systems
- Understand system logs, patch management process and configuration management for information system security
Encryption Technologies
- Understand the concept of encryption and decryption, digital certificates, public key infrastructure and the key differences between cryptography and steganography
- Identify the different components of a cryptosystem
- Develop a plan for information security encryption techniques
Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing
- Design, develop and implement a penetration testing program based on penetration testing methodology to ensure organizational security
- Identify different vulnerabilities associated with information systems and legal issues involved in penetration testing
- Develop pre and post testing procedures
- Develop a plan for pen test reporting and implementation of technical vulnerability corrections
- Develop vulnerability management systems
Threat Management
- Create and manage a threat management program including threat intelligence, thirdparty threats, and security bulletins regarding hardware and software, particularly open-source software
Incident Response and Computer Forensics
- Develop a plan to identify a potential security violation and take appropriate action to report the incident
- Comply with system termination procedures and incident reporting requirements related to potential security incidents or actual breaches
- Assess potential security violations to determine if the network security policies have been breached, assess the impact, and preserve evidence
- Diagnose and resolve IA problems in response to reported incidents
- Design incident response procedures including testing, table top exercises, and playbooks
- Develop guidelines to determine whether a security incident is indicative of a violation of law that requires special legal action
Identify the volatile and persistent system information - Set up and manage forensic labs and programs
- Understand various digital media devices, -discovery principles and practices and different file systems
- Develop and manage an organizational digital forensic program
- Establish, develop and manage forensic investigation teams
- Design investigation processes such as evidence collection, imaging, data acquisition, and analysis
- Identify the best practices to acquire, store and process digital evidence
- Configure and use various forensic investigation tools
- Design anti-forensic
Application Security
- 6.1 Secure SDLC Model
- 6.2 Separation of Development, Test, and Production Environments
- 6.3 Application Security Testing Approaches
- 6.4 DevSecOps
- 6.5 Waterfall Methodology and Security
- 6.6 Agile Methodology and Security
- 6.7 Other Application Development Approaches
- 6.8 Application Hardening
- 6.9 Application Security Technologies
- 6.10 Version Control and Patch Management
- 6.11 Database Security
- 6.12 Database Hardening
- 6.13 Secure Coding Practices
Virtualization Security
- 8.1 Virtualization Overview
- 8.2 Virtualization Risks
- 8.3 Virtualization Security Concerns
- 8.4 Virtualization Security Controls
- 8.5 Virtualization Security Reference Model
Cloud Computing Security
- 9.1 Overview of Cloud Computing
- 9.2 Security and Resiliency Cloud Services
- 9.3 Cloud Security Concerns
- 9.4 Cloud Security Controls
- 9.5 Cloud Computing Protection
Transformative Technologies
- 10.1 Artificial Intelligence
- 10.2 Augmented Reality
- 10.3 Autonomous SOC
- 10.4 Dynamic Deception
- 10.5 Software-Defined
Strategic Planning
- Design, develop and maintain enterprise information security architecture (EISA) by aligning business processes, IT software and hardware, local and wide area networks, people, operations, and projects with the organization’s overall security strategy
- Perform external analysis of the organization (e.g., analysis of cusemers, competitors, markets and industry environment) and internal analysis (risk management, organizational capabilities, performance measurement etc.) and utilize them to align information security program with organization’s objectives
- Identify and consult with key stakeholders to ensure understanding of organization’s objectives
- Define a forward-looking, visionary and innovative strategic plan for the role of the information security program with clear goals, objectives and targets that support the operational needs of the organization
- Define key performance indicators and measure e effectiveness on continuous basis
- Assess and adjust security resources to ensure they support the organization’s strategic objectives
- Monitor and update activities to ensure accountability and progress
Finance
- Analyze, forecast and develop the operational budget of the security department
- Acquire and manage the necessary resources for implementation and management of information security plan
- Allocate financial resources to projects, processes and units within information security program
- Monitor and oversee cost management of information security projects, return on investment (ROI) of key purchases related to IT infrastructure and security and ensure alignment with the strategic plan
- Identify and report financial metrics to stakeholders
- Balance the IT security investment portfolio based on EISA considerations and enterprise security priorities
- Understand the acquisition life cycle and determine the importance of procurement by performing Business Impact Analysis
- Identify different procurement strategies and understand the importance of costbenefit analysis during procurement of an information system
- Understand the basic procurement concepts such as Statement of Objectives (SOO), Statement of Work (SOW), and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
- Collaborate with various stakeholders (which may include internal client, lawyers, IT security professionals, privacy professionals, security engineers, suppliers, and others) on the procurement of IT security products and services
- Include risk-based security requirements in acquisition plans, cost estimates, statements of work, contracts, and evaluation factors for award, service level agreements, and other pertinent procurement documents
- Design vendor selection process and management policy
- Develop contract administration policies that direct the evaluation and acceptance of delivered IT security products and services under a contract, as well as the security evaluation of IT and software being procured
- Develop measures and reporting standards to measure and report on key objectives in procurements aligned with IT security policies and procedures
- Understand the IA security requirements to be included in statements of work and other appropriate procurement documents
Third Party Management
- Design third party selection process
- Design third party management policy, metrics, and processes
- Design and manage the third party assessment process including ongoing compliance management
- Develop measures and reporting standards to measure and report on key objectives in procurements aligned with IT security policies and
procedures - Include risk-based security requirements in acquisition plans, cost estimates, statements of work, contracts, and evaluation factors for award, service level agreements, and other pertinent procurement documents
- Understand the security, privacy, and compliance requirements to be included in Statements of Work (SOW), Master Service Agreements (MSA). and other appropriate procurement documents
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Exam & Certification
Certified Chief Information Security Officer Exam.
Training & Certification Guide
There are three cognitive levels tested on the CCISO exam but only two tested on the EISM exam:
- Level 1 – Knowledge: This cognitive level of questions is used to recall memorized facts. This is the most basic cognitive level rarely accepted on certifications as it merely recognizes the candidate’s ability to memorize information. It can be effectively used when asking for basic definitions, standards or any concrete fact. This level appears on both the CCISO and EISM exam.
- Level 2 – Application: This cognitive level of questions is used to identify the candidate’s ability to understand the application of a given concept. It differs from Knowledge based questions in the sense that it requires the understanding and correct applicability of a given concept – not just the concept itself. This type of question often quires additional context before the actual question is provided in the stem. This level appears on both the CCISO and EISM exam.
- Level 3 – Analysis: This cognitive level of questions is used to identify the candidate’s ability to identify and resolve a problem given a series of variables and context. Analysis questions differ greatly from Application based questions in the sense that they require not only the applicability of a concept but also how a concept, given certain constrain can be used to solve a problem. This level appears on the CCISO and not on the EISM exam.
Number of Questions: 150
Test Duration: 2.5 Hours
Test Format: Multiple Choice
Test Delivery: ECC Exam Portal
In order to maintain the high integrity of our certifications exams, EC-Council Exams are provided in multiple forms (I.e. different question banks). Each form is carefully analyzed through beta testing with an appropriate sample group under the purview of a committee of subject matter experts that ensure that each of our exams not only has academic rigor but also has “real world” applicability. We also have a process to determine the difficulty rating of each question. The individual rating then contributes to an overall “Cut Score” for each exam form. To ensure each form has equal assessment standards, cut scores are set on a “per exam form” basis. Depending on which exam form is challenged, cut scores can range from 60% to 78%.
Frequently Asked Questions
The application fee for the eligibility application is $100. Once approved, the voucher for the exam can be purchased for $999. Instructions on where and how to purchase the exam voucher will be sent to you once you are approved. These costs do not apply to students who have purchased training packages.
To be approved to take the CCISO exam without first taking certified training, you will need to show evidence and present verifiers to show that you have 5 years of experience in each of the five CCISO domains. Experience waivers are available for some industry-accepted certifications and CICISO Exam Eligibility Application Form higher education. Please see the chart below for more details on waivers.
Experience Waivers are granted in certain domains in the case of industry accepted, professional certifications and higher degrees in information security as show below. Between certification and training waivers, applicants can only waive 3 years of experience for each domain. If you have taken training, you must show 5 years of experience in 3 of the 5 domains in order to take the CCISO exam.
Applicants found not qualified for the CCISO Exam may choose to take the EC-Council Information Security Manager (EISM) exam instead. The EISM exam is less challenging than the CCISO exam and leads to the EISM certification, which has no experience requirements, but does require that you take CCISO training.
C|CISO is the right choice for you and your career if you:
- Aspire to attain the highest regarded title within the information security profession – CISO
- Already serve as an official CISO
- Or perform CISO functions in their organization without the official title
To renew your certification you must satisfy the Continuing Education requirements and remit a renewal fee of $100.00 (USD).
EC-Council is highly regarded within the cybersecurity field. Their CCISO program uniquely combines technical knowledge with essential business, communication, and leadership skills
A CCISO is a senior-level executive responsible for establishing and maintaining an organization’s cybersecurity strategy. The rapid increase in cyberattacks, growing regulatory requirements, and the potential for severe financial and reputational damage highlight the critical need for experienced CISOs across all industries.
The CCISO certification is designed for experienced IT and security professionals aspiring to C-suite roles. Ideal candidates generally have:
- 5+ years in information security roles, with at least two of those years in a management position
- A strong grasp of technology, security frameworks, and governance principles
- Excellent communication and leadership skills
CISO salaries vary by industry, location, and company size. However, they’re consistently among the highest-paying positions in IT. Resources indicate:
- Average US Base Salary: $223,161 from Salary.com)
- Salaries can exceed $500,000 annually in some cases.
Yes. The knowledge gained applies to other senior cybersecurity roles like:
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- Chief Information Officer (CIO)
- Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
- Vice President of Information Security
- Security Architect
- Security Consultant