The Mandate — CISO Budget Siege
You just took the CISO seat. Here is a five-year budget and a ticking clock. Spend it to cut risk — but the CFO guards every dollar, engineering routes around your gates, the board wants assurance, and the breach you didn't prepare for is the one that ends your career. Negotiate, invest, survive the events, and find out how your term ends.
What this is
- A strategy game where you are a new CISO: pick a 5-year security budget ($100k–$100M) and spend it to cut risk, keep the board onside and survive what comes.
- A ticking clock (10 minutes, 2 per in-game year) forces real decisions; invest across 12 security initiatives, each with a cost, a time-to-value and political side-effects.
- Hold 1:1s with the CEO, CFO, board, engineering, COO and more — authored branching conversations that win budget and political capital, or cost it.
- Random events — ransomware, a failed audit, BEC, a budget cut — resolve based on what you invested in and who you kept onside.
- End-of-term verdict: promoted, renewed, quietly moved on, or fired after the breach. Pro game.
Frequently asked questions
What is The Mandate?
A browser strategy game that puts you in the CISO seat for a five-year term. You choose a security budget between $100k and $100M, then allocate it across initiatives (MFA, EDR, SIEM, backups, AppSec, GRC, Zero Trust and more), negotiate with stakeholders in 1:1 conversations, and weather random events — all under a clock. Your residual risk, board confidence and political capital decide whether you get promoted or fired.
How does it play?
Each of the five years you get a budget to spend, a set of stakeholders you can each talk to once, and then you end the year and an event resolves based on your posture and relationships. Investments take time to pay off, the board’s confidence is your air cover, and every dollar pleases some stakeholders while annoying others. In timed mode you have two minutes per year.
Is it realistic?
It is a deliberately compressed model, but the trade-offs are real: highest-ROI controls first, time-to-value, the CFO guarding spend, engineering routing around gates, the board wanting assurance, and the fact that a breach you prepared for is survivable while one you did not is career-ending. It is a teaching game about security leadership judgement, not a simulator.
Is it free?
No — The Mandate is a Pro game included with any PlayCISO paid plan.