Security leadership is often reduced to breaches, controls, and compliance milestones. CISO Diaries exists to tell a different story. This series goes inside the day-to-day reality of today’s most influential CISOs: how they think, how they prioritize, and how they operate under constant pressure. By exploring routines, decision-making frameworks, and personal security habits, CISO Diaries highlights the human side of cybersecurity leadership, where trust, judgment, and business alignment matter as much as technical expertise.
In this edition, we sit down with Temi Adebambo to discuss what it means to secure one of the largest digital entertainment ecosystems in the world, without ever getting in the way of the experience.
About the Interviewee: Temi Adebambo
Temi Adebambo is the General Manager of Security (CISO) for Microsoft Gaming, where he is responsible for safeguarding more than 500 million monthly active players across iconic platforms and franchises, including Xbox, Call of Duty, Minecraft, World of Warcraft, Halo, and Candy Crush. With over two decades of experience spanning technology, gaming, life sciences, financial services, and consumer industries, Temi has led large-scale security and cloud transformation programs for Fortune 500 organizations. Known for his ability to align security with velocity, Temi brings deep expertise across cloud security, identity, application security, risk management, and governance, while championing a leadership style rooted in trust, empathy, and business enablement.
How do you usually explain what you do to someone outside of cybersecurity?
I usually tell them I’m in the business of protecting fun. At Microsoft Gaming, we have a community of over 500 million monthly active players connecting across Xbox, Call of Duty, Minecraft, and more. My job is to make sure that when a parent puts in their credit card or a player logs in to compete, that trust isn’t broken.
I often say that in the gaming world, if security is getting in your way, then it’s not well-designed. So, my role is really about building invisible guardrails, keeping the bad guys out (ransomware, nation states, angry gamers, account thieves) without interrupting the immersive experience for the player.
What does a “routine” workday look like for you, if such a thing exists?
There isn’t really a “routine” day, especially operating at this scale, but there is a rhythm. My time is generally split between three buckets.
First is business alignment. I spend a lot of time with the game studios and engineering leads. We aren’t just “blocking” risks; we are enabling them to ship faster. Second is threat landscape monitoring. Whether it’s nation-state actors looking to mine crypto on our infrastructure or new cheat engines affecting fair play, I need to know what’s hitting us today. Finally, I focus on talent and culture. I learned early on, from my time at Deloitte through AWS, that hiring brilliant technical minds who can’t collaborate is a recipe for disaster. I spend a significant amount of energy ensuring my team is communicating effectively across the business.
What part of your role takes the most mental energy right now?
The intersection of AI and Trust. We are in an escalating arms race. The bad guys are using AI to automate attacks, generate sophisticated phishing campaigns, and even potentially corrupt game content.
Trying to stay ahead of that curve, figuring out how we use “AI to secure AI,” takes a lot of mental cycles. We are moving from a world of static defense to one where we need autonomous, context-aware systems that can react at machine speed.
What’s one security habit or routine you personally never skip? (Work or personal.)
Verification. It sounds simple, but I verify the source of everything. In my personal life, that means I don’t click links in texts or emails without checking the sender, even if it looks like it’s from a friend. In a professional context, it translates to a “Zero Trust” mindset. I never assume a system or a request is safe just because it’s “inside” the perimeter or comes from a known partner.
What does your own personal security setup look like? (Password manager, MFA, backups, devices, at a high level.)
I practice what I preach, but I keep it usable.
- Identity: I use a strong password manager for everything and enforce MFA on every single account that supports it, preferably using hardware keys (like YubiKey) or biometrics rather than SMS.
- Network: At home, I run a segmented network. IoT devices (smart fridges, lights, gaming consoles) are on a guest network, completely isolated from the devices where I do banking or work.
What book, podcast, or resource has influenced how you think about leadership or security?
It’s not a technical book, but Team of Teams by General Stanley McChrystal resonated with me deeply. The concept of moving from a command-and-control hierarchy to a shared consciousness is exactly what modern security requires.
In my time at AWS and now Microsoft, I’ve seen that the “lone wolf” security genius doesn’t work. You need a network of teams that have the context to make decisions without waiting for approval from the top. That adaptability is the only way to survive in a cloud-native world.
What’s a lesson you learned the hard way in your career?
Early in my leadership journey, I learned that a security team that is feared or disliked is a blind security team. If developers are afraid or don’t like to talk to you, they will hide their issues, make incorrect security assumptions, and work around the security team and controls until it’s too late address the issues. I hire with empathy and communication skills just as rigorously as I hire for coding or architectural skills.
What keeps you up at night right now, from a security perspective?
Supply chain integrity and the “invisible” corruption of products. In gaming, if someone steals credit cards, that’s a known crisis we can handle. But if an attacker subtly manipulates the development pipeline of a game or an AI model, altering the reality of the product in a way we don’t immediately detect, that erodes the fundamental trust of the platform.
Nation-state actors are getting quieter and more patient. They aren’t just smashing windows; they are trying to replace the foundation without us noticing.
How do you measure whether your security program is actually working?
Metrics like “mean time to remediate” and “patching compliance” are important, but I look at two softer metrics overall as ultimate success drivers: Velocity and Engagement.
- Velocity: Are the game studios negatively impacted in their ability to ship because of us? If yes, we are failing. Security should be baked in (shifted left) so that the secure path is also the fast path.
- Engagement: Do product teams come to us, or do they wait until the audit or issues are identified? If they are bringing us in at the design phase, it means they see us as enablers. That’s a winning program. These are 2 important measures that are always in my mind beyond the traditional security posture metrics.
What advice would you give to someone stepping into their first CISO role today?
Do not try to be the smartest technical person in the room. Your job is no longer just to configure firewalls; it’s to manage risk and translate that risk into business language.
Spend your first 90 days listening. Understand how your company makes money. If you walk in and start throwing around “no” without understanding the business context, you will be marginalized instantly. Build relationships with the key stakeholders as well as HR, Legal, Finance, and the Product leads. You need them to be your champions when things go wrong.
What do you think will matter less in security five to ten years from now?
The password. We are finally, actually, on the verge of a passwordless future with passkeys and biometrics. The idea of a shared secret string of characters being the primary gatekeeper to our digital lives will look archaic.
Also, the “perimeter.” We’ve been saying it for years, but the firewall as a primary defense is dead. Identity is the new perimeter. In ten years, worrying about network segmentation in the traditional sense will matter much less than verifiable, zero-trust identity controls.
Looking ahead 10 years, what do you believe security teams will spend most of their time on that they don’t today?
Governing autonomous agents.
Today, we secure users, and we secure apps. In ten years, we will be securing AI agents that negotiate, buy, code, and deploy on our behalf without human intervention. We will spend our time auditing the logic and ethics of these agents rather than patching servers. We’ll be answering questions like: “Why did our purchasing bot decide to buy that software?” or “Did our coding bot inadvertently introduce a bias?” It will be closer to psychology and forensic accounting than traditional info-sec.