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Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are stuck balancing rising cyber threats with in-house pressure for more innovation and digital transformation, all while battling a lack of knowledge among senior leadership, according to new research.
IT recruitment specialists Experis’ latest report, Future Forward: CIO 2025 Outlook, found that nearly half (41%) of the 1,400 tech leaders and CIOs polled worldwide said cybersecurity is now their main priority, with 77% choosing it as their top focus area for investment in the coming year.
However, while 35% of CIOs see anticipating cyber risks as a top priority, only 37% say their company’s overall risk strategy aligns with cybersecurity, highlighting a critical gap in management as more than half (56%) of tech leaders believe senior leaders lack knowledge about the CIO role and what is required to succeed.
That disconnect stretches even further, as the study found nearly a quarter (23%) of
CIOs still feel they need to justify the value of IT to internal stakeholders, with 28% of IT leaders reporting that managing internal resistance takes the most time away from important tasks.
Despite those persistent problems, CIOs are relatively optimistic about the year ahead. Nearly a third (32%) are excited about the impact of predictive data analytics on their business, as well as the potential ROI from cloud computing and scalable infrastructure.
In the UK, most CIOs (86%) are working hard to align their organisation’s investment strategies with the transformation goals, spending more time on average than their global counterparts in communicating with stakeholders on AI projects (41% UK vs. 32% average) and researching new tech (61% vs. 51%).
However, they may also be inadvertently constraining their talent pool, as UK CIOs were found to be the least likely to consider graduates from technical colleges to take on tech-heavy roles (22% vs. 32%).
The research shows that it isn’t only UK firms having difficulties in acquiring the right tech talent, with 76% of organisations in the IT sector reporting difficulty in finding skilled candidates.
Most CIOs and tech leaders (81%) have noticed a change in hiring patterns, with 32% saying their hiring has expanded into strategic areas such as cloud computing and sustainability tech, making skilled talent even harder to find.
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The dearth of new talent is hampering AI initiatives, with more than half of tech leaders (52%) saying embedding AI skills into existing roles has become the top AI adoption challenge, though most organisations are either actively exploring (33%) or already implementing (27%) AI technologies in some capacity.
“Today’s CIOs aren’t just playing defence; they’re strategically blending security and innovation to create competitive advantage,” said Kye Mitchell, head of Experis US.
“The most successful technology leaders are embedding resilience into their digital foundations while simultaneously deploying AI, cloud, and other advanced technologies to outpace competitors.
“They aren’t making trade-offs; they’re transforming their entire approach to technology by creating integrated strategies where digital defence enables rather than restricts progress.”
