Mike Gentile is building cybersecurity’s next team

Mike Gentile once thanked his wife for reviewing his book chapters at the rate of one pair of shoes apiece. It is a pleasingly concrete detail in a career devoted to making slippery subjects easier to grasp. Information security has policies, frameworks and an almost theatrical fondness for acronyms. Gentile has spent much of his working life asking how people are supposed to use any of it.

His acknowledgments in The CISO Handbook also thanked his parents for never missing a game, and his soccer coach Marcus Ziemer for teaching him teamwork. The shoes provide the joke. The coach supplies the plot. Across books, businesses and training programs, Gentile keeps returning to the same practical concern: how to help people become capable, then give them somewhere to put that capability to work.

A finance degree, followed by a change of direction

Gentile studied at Sonoma State University, with his public education record listing 1994 to 1998. His degree was in finance. A finance internship introduced him to cold calling, which did a remarkably efficient job of clarifying his interests. He discovered he wanted to do something else.

He was playing soccer in Northern California, away from his Southern California roots, when work at an internet service provider offered another direction. Technology caught his attention. During the dot-com period, he worked on projects that required teams to build whole business environments, including infrastructure and operations. Seeing how the pieces connected helped him move into security, a discipline whose problems are rarely polite enough to stay within one department.

That route matters to the rest of the story. His entry into technology followed experience and curiosity rather than a perfectly straight academic line. The later founder of a technical academy had himself needed room to change course.

Before the academy, a handbook

Published in 2005, The CISO Handbook: A Practical Guide to Securing Your Company paired Gentile with coauthors Ron Collette and Thomas D. August. Its architecture was orderly: assess, plan, design, execute and report. A reader was asked to understand the business, establish responsibilities, build a program, do the work and explain the results.

Even the contents reveal an interest wider than equipment. Negotiating, organizational dynamics, communication and talent assessment sit alongside policies and project requirements. A security program, in this telling, has to survive contact with a company full of people.

Then came CISO Soft Skills: Securing Organizations Impaired by Employee Politics, Apathy, and Intolerant Perspectives. The title leaves little doubt about the authors' opinion of the office obstacles course. It examined organizational behavior as part of security work. Gentile's writing placed the human complications directly on the desk, where a technical fix alone could hardly be expected to tidy them away.

The second book’s contents name apathy and myopia among the problems under examination. These are awkward subjects for any organization, because they concern habits and perspectives as well as formal responsibilities. Including them in a security book makes a quiet demand of the reader: look at how the organization behaves while deciding how it should be protected. It is an interest that would remain visible in Gentile’s later emphasis on learning, communication and collaborative work.

Delphiis: putting a method into a business

Gentile's consulting background included Coastline Consulting, where he developed enterprise security programs. Delphiis gave that interest a software and services business: risk assessments, continuing assessment work, remediation planning and information that organizations could use to manage security decisions.

He was its cofounder and chief technology officer, and served as chief executive from the company's inception. In December 2012, Chris Rogers succeeded him as president and CEO. Gentile welcomed Rogers' experience in building teams and delivering complex work simply. The distinction between the roles is worth keeping straight: his CEO tenure belonged to Delphiis's earlier period.

Auxilio announced its acquisition of Delphiis in July 2014. The transaction was described as approximately $2.7 million in cash and stock, with additional commitments and management incentives. Gentile was to become Auxilio's executive vice president of innovation and security. A company sale supplied a visible milestone, but his central preoccupation continued: organizing security work so that people could carry it out together.

The company as a place to learn

CISOSHARE, founded in 2015, made learning and teaching part of its operating approach. Gentile remains listed as founder and CEO. The company builds and manages security programs, with work ranging from assessments and risk management to outsourced security leadership.

The teaching runs in two directions. Employees develop their skills inside the business; clients learn how to manage their own security programs. That makes explanation part of delivery. It also creates a practical test for a consultant: can the customer understand the work well enough to maintain it?

The business found customers. CISOSHARE ranked No. 88 overall on the 2019 Inc. 5000, followed by No. 736 in 2020 and No. 1,293 in 2021. It was also named an Inc. Best Workplaces honoree in 2023. These are dated markers of a particular period, rather than a promise about the next one. They give the teaching philosophy a commercial history to examine.

The method also keeps the customer inside the conversation. A security program needs an agreed understanding of what the organization is trying to protect, how it will check its work and who can make decisions. CISOSHARE’s current services include continuing operation as well as initial assessment and development. The relationship therefore extends beyond presenting a plan. Someone must keep performing the processes after the presentation ends, when the questions become less ceremonial and more practical.

A seat at the table, even for the intern

Growth brought internal problems that required attention. Gentile described a process called skunkworks: people from different parts of CISOSHARE could volunteer to identify issues, rank priorities and work on improvements within a month. Sales and delivery were among the areas that used it.

Participation did not depend on seniority. An intern could take a role in the process. The group assigned responsibility for managing the work and for driving particular problems toward resolution. There is something agreeably unfashionable about the arrangement: gather people, choose an issue, assign ownership, finish something.

His own task list needed an edit too. Gentile described using Notepad and realizing that business demands occupied the top positions while family did not. He moved family to the top. The change was small enough to perform immediately, and specific enough to expose the difference between declaring a priority and putting it on today's list.

The skills gap gets a classroom

In 2019, Gentile founded CyberForward to connect technical development with employment opportunity. The idea addressed two concerns together: organizations needing security talent and people needing access to work that could support a living.

The program's approach developed through community and education partnerships. A Coastline ROP board package for a proposed spring 2023 course described thirteen weeks of virtual instruction, work-based learning and internships for some students. Thirty places were planned, and Gentile was named as the teacher. The same document reported ten former participants already working with CyberForward as interns.

Those details make the enterprise tangible. Someone has to plan the lessons, supervise practice and arrange a useful next step. Gentile had also warned in January 2020 that Orange County needed more professional development programs to meet its demand for technical workers. His response eventually included teaching the course himself. The founder appears on the timetable.

Soccer returns, carrying a training plan

The sporting influence became explicit in Innovation is Love, a framework announced by TalentSplit in December 2025. Gentile was identified as its creator and as CEO of TalentSplit, CyberForward Academy and CISOSHARE. Its model borrows from youth soccer development: shared standards, places to practice, coaching and ways to understand progress.

TalentSplit connects developing technical professionals with supervised service work. CyberForward supplies a Learn, Train, Work approach. The broader framework aims to connect education, employers, community organizations and government around development that continues across institutional boundaries.

The vocabulary is ambitious; the underlying question is familiar. What does a learner do next, and who helps them do it? Soccer has a field, a coach and another practice. Gentile wants technical development to have similarly legible arrangements. The sporting analogy has followed him a considerable distance from the university pitch.

“We created TPS out of necessity.”

Mike Gentile, January 2026

A score, then a place to practise

CyberForward announced the public launch of Tech Proficiency Score in January 2026. Gentile's explanation focused on disconnected signals: grades, credentials, work histories and other achievements that do not necessarily help a learner or employer understand the next step.

The framework is designed to assess ten dimensions, spanning technical development, communication, execution and teaching, among other areas. It is intended to complement academic results and professional certifications. Its announced purpose is to connect assessment with planning and continued development. That is a proposition about how skills might be understood, rather than proof that a score guarantees a job.

Another development gives his interests an address. An October 2026 announcement introduced The Visionary, a San Clemente coworking, training and event center founded by Gentile, with an opening scheduled for October 14. CISOSHARE, CyberForward Academy and TalentSplit were described as independently operating businesses housed there.

The site's association with surfboard entrepreneur Dale Velzy appealed to Gentile because of Velzy's willingness to recognize and support other people's potential. After years of books, security programs and classrooms, Gentile's latest project offers an actual room for that idea. There is space for work, space for practice and, one hopes, enough chairs for the people still waiting for their first invitation.