Live • unscripted • real pressure

The Heavyweight Championship of Cyber Leadership

Oklahoma CISO Showdown is a live, scenario-driven competition where security leaders are forced to make real decisions under real pressure. No slides. No hypotheticals. Just judgment, leadership, and credibility — tested in public.

Incident response Ransomware AI risk Vendor failure Executive pressure

Judgment over theory

Competitors explain what they would actually do — not what a framework says should happen.

Leadership under pressure

Scenarios evolve, facts change, and time works against you — just like real incidents.

Community credibility

The Oklahoma security community sees how leaders think, prioritize, and communicate.

What is the Oklahoma CISO Showdown?

Oklahoma CISO Showdown is a live competitive event that puts experienced security leaders on the spot with realistic cyber incidents and governance challenges. Participants must commit to decisions, explain tradeoffs, and adapt as new facts emerge.

While the presentation is high-energy, the content is serious: incident command, risk acceptance, policy enforcement, executive communication, and the consequences of getting it wrong.

The format

Each showdown consists of multiple rounds built around real-world cyber scenarios. Competitors are given limited time to assess the situation, make a call, and explain their reasoning to the audience.

Scenarios escalate. Constraints appear. Bad news arrives late. The goal is not perfection — it’s demonstrating credible leadership when everything is messy.

The Event

This isn’t a panel and it isn’t a lecture. The Oklahoma CISO Showdown is built to feel like a main event: a live crowd, a referee, real prompts, and leaders making calls in the moment. It’s high-energy on purpose — because pressure changes everything.

On stage: a champion raises the belt — The moment the belt comes up — the room knows someone earned it.

On stage: a competitor speaks during showdown — It’s live. It’s unscripted. You explain the call, and you own it.

Previous Champions

The Oklahoma CISO Showdown championship is earned, not assigned. Each champion held the belt by making defensible decisions under pressure, in front of peers, with real-world consequences on the line.

Jonathan Kimmitt

Spring 2023 • Spring 2025 – Present

Inaugural Champion and current title holder.

Jeff Story

Fall 2023

Kevin Sesock

Spring 2024

Chad Kliewer

Fall 2024

Title history: Jonathan Kimmitt (Spring 2023) → Jeff Story (Fall 2023) → Kevin Sesock (Spring 2024) → Chad Kliewer (Fall 2024) → Jonathan Kimmitt (Spring 2025 – Present).

Community Outreach

Oklahoma CISO Showdown is more than a title match — it’s a way to show up for the community. The belt draws people in, but the goal is always the same: support the Oklahoma security ecosystem, connect practitioners, and make cyber leadership approachable to the next wave.

You’ll find the Showdown at community events, conferences, and meetups — taking pictures, talking shop, encouraging students and newcomers, and helping strengthen the local security culture.

Community outreach with the belt — The belt gets passed around — because the community is the point.