The Four Cs: Why a Schoolteacher Makes a Great CISO

About this episode

Manu Ressel discusses his transition from schoolteacher to CISO and the importance of the 'Four Cs' in cybersecurity leadership.

In this episode of The New CISO, host Steve Moore speaks with Manuel "Manu" Ressel, CISO at SAUTER Group, about his unconventional journey from classroom teacher to cybersecurity leader—and why the "Four Cs" of modern education provide a powerful framework for building effective security programs. Drawing from years as both a teacher and school principal in Germany, Manu introduces Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity as essential leadership skills that fundamentally challenge how the industry approaches awareness training and incident response. After growing frustrated with Germany's outdated education system that prioritized memorization over critical thinking, Manu left his position as principal and reinvented himself as a digital transformation consultant. Working with schools and mid-sized companies to adopt cloud technologies, he eventually landed the CISO role at SAUTER, an international building automation company with 4,000 employees across multiple countries. The conversation tackles security's most persistent failure: awareness training that doesn't work. Manu reveals that 37% of security incidents in Germany could be prevented if users made…

People in this episode

Host: Steve Moore

Guest: Manuel "Manu" Ressel

Topics covered

• cybersecurity
• education
• leadership
• awareness training
• digital transformation

Keywords

• CISO
• cybersecurity leadership
• Four Cs
• awareness training
• digital transformation

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: SAUTER Group, Europe's NIS 2 regulation

Places: Germany

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