The CISO Inbox Is Not a Sales Funnel

The CISO Inbox Is Not a Sales Funnel Inversion6 CISO Ian Thornton-Trump on What Cybersecurity Startups Get Wrong Mathew J. Schwartz (euroinfosec) • June 5, 2026     Credit Eligible Get Permission Ian Thornton-Trump, CISO, Inversion6, and CyberEdBoard member CISOs are bombarded with more than 400 cold outreach attempts a month - ignoring nearly all of them. If vendors want to break through, they need to stop selling and start solving, said Ian Thornton-Trump, CISO at Inversion6. See Also: AI Impersonation Is the New Arms Race-Is Your Workforce Ready? The single biggest mistake cybersecurity startups make is failing to understand their audience. Thornton-Trump said generic outreach - fake familiarity, unsolicited voice notes, buzzword-heavy pitches referencing "single panes of glass" or unnamed industry quadrants - signals immediately that a vendor hasn't done its homework. The alternative, he said, is to identify a specific business or audit problem the CISO is facing, lead with that, and let the product speak for itself. "Don't send me a voice note on LinkedIn. Do not suggest that we've met when we really haven't," he said. "Think about who the person is, do the research, and then come to me with what is the one business problem or the one audit problem that you're going to solve for me." In this video interview with ISMG at Infosecurity Europe 2026, Thornton-Trump also discussed: Why typosquatting defense offers a simple, scalable model for early-stage brand credibility; How artificial intelligence governance is failing organizations that have already deployed tools like Copilot without policy or strategy in place; Why peer communities remains the primary information source for most CISOs. Thornton-Trump spearheads Inversion6's efforts to expand its successful model from the United States into the U.K. and EU markets. He has 30 years of experience in IT security. Prior to Inversion6, Thornton-Trump was CISO at Cyjax, where he performed real-time analysis of immediate threats and keep abreast of developing security threats. He is also a CyberEdBoard member.