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12/06/2026 9:30 pm
TL;DR: CIO-CTO collaboration can improve technology alignment, resource use, innovation, and risk management, according to Zluri, but the identity lesson is sharper: siloed decision-making weakens governance over access, systems, and accountability. Stronger coordination is now a control issue, not just an operating model choice.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Zluri: IT Teams The Power of Collaboration between CIOs and CTOs - Maximizing Organizational Success
By the numbers:
- Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts.
- 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, increasing unauthorised access and broadening the attack surface.
- 96% of organisations store secrets outside of secrets managers in vulnerable locations including code, config files, and CI/CD tools.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should organisations govern access when CIO and CTO responsibilities overlap?
A: They should assign one accountable owner for each access decision, even if multiple teams administer the systems.
Q: Why do technology silos create identity risk?
A: Because identities move across systems faster than org charts do.
Q: What should security teams measure in CIO-CTO collaboration?
A: Measure whether the collaboration produces consistent ownership, complete identity inventory, and timely revocation across systems.
Practitioner guidance
- Define a single access ownership model Assign one accountable owner for approvals, provisioning, review, and revocation across application, infrastructure, and automation layers.
- Inventory non-human identities alongside applications Track service accounts, API keys, tokens, and certificates in the same asset inventory used for systems and workloads.
- Align security reviews to delivery milestones Require identity and security sign-off before new integrations, workflow automation, or platform changes go live.
What's in the full article
Zluri's full blog post covers the organisational collaboration detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- How CIO and CTO collaboration is framed across technology strategy, resource use, and innovation
- The article's practical examples of shared planning, shared visibility, and cross-functional teamwork
- Zluri's own view of how workflow automation and vendor management support internal alignment
👉 Read Zluri's analysis of CIO and CTO collaboration for technology leadership →
CIO and CTO collaboration: what it means for IAM teams?
Explore further
12/06/2026 11:37 pm
Technology collaboration is an identity control issue, not just a leadership issue. CIO-CTO alignment matters because access, infrastructure, and application delivery are now inseparable. When ownership is split, the enterprise gets multiple sources of truth for identity decisions, and that makes governance weaker even if each team is technically competent. The practitioner takeaway is to treat collaboration as part of the control environment, not as organisational etiquette.
A few things that frame the scale:
- Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts, according to Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- 96% of organisations store secrets outside of secrets managers in vulnerable locations including code, config files, and CI/CD tools.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How do shared technology decisions affect zero trust programmes?
A: Zero trust only works when policy enforcement and identity governance are aligned. Shared decisions can improve consistency, but they can also create exceptions if no one owns the entitlement lifecycle. Teams should test whether access remains verifiable after changes, because that is where collaboration becomes either control or drift.
👉 Read our full editorial: CIO and CTO collaboration shapes identity governance outcomes
