A recent study, “Virtualization Makes CIOs’ Role Key,” revealed that CEOs consider CIOs among the most important C-level executives, and they stressed that these IT leaders are important to decision-making strategies and to bringing security to board-level thinking. CEOs and board members are worried about the growing number of internal and external security risks that could ruin customer trust and business forecasts. For these reasons, CIOs are expected to rise in their company’s hierarchies. Thirty-four percent of IT decision-makers think that their jobs are more important in their company than ever before, while another 30 percent admitted that their job has completely changed in the past five years. “Still, not all C-suites include CIOs and CISOs in the business decision-making process,” the report added. The study, which surveyed 250 IT decision-makers in America, was conducted by iSense Solutions for security technology company Bitdefender. The survey includes CEOs, CIOs, CISOs, IT managers and directors, IT systems administrators and IT support specialists. Sixty-two percent of surveyed organizations have more than 3,000 employees.