security leadership skills

After five years of running my own business, I joined a new company in January. Even as I go full throttle into this opportunity, I’m considering how to transition my leadership skills and traits to the new position and environment. I’m in no way an actor, so my natural personality and style will inevitably emerge. Given the new position — which entails new colleagues, expectations, culture, mission, team dynamics, and duties — I’ve wondered whether…

Cue the Ennio Morricone theme. The 2024 SECURITY 500 Conference was full of examples and tales of leadership — the good, the bad, and the ugly. Herewith, a compilation. The Good: Critical to providing effective leadership is knowing how to inspire and impart shared mission and vision. In her keynote, Linda Reid, Vice President of Security Operations, The Walt Disney World Resort, spoke about how she inculcates her team with a mission that aligns with Disney’s…

What leadership issues are challenging and motivating today’s senior security executives? I put that question out to a “brain trust” of chief security officers, VPs of security, and security directors across several verticals, sizes, geographies, and reporting structures. The following represent some of the most pertinent leadership issues identified by your peers today. Downsizing and Restructuring “Many organizations are experiencing mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, restructuring, reductions in workforce and layoffs — the latter two items affecting…

For a pretty tight-lipped bunch, security professionals have found a place where they can open up: podcasts. Interesting and relevant podcasts are everywhere. They are devoted to cybersecurity, risk and tactics. They cover executive protection, threat intelligence and loss prevention. They talk about hacking, secure coding and insider risk. They explore the intricacies of guarding, access control and surveillance. How do you choose out of the thousands of possibilities? To narrow it down, I went…

The term “thought leader” originated 30 years ago this month in PWC’s magazine Strategy+Business. Today, among LinkedIn’s billion users, is there anyone who doesn’t self-identify as a thought leader — bots and scammers included? That’s an exaggeration, but in an age of ubiquitous claims of thought leadership in security and the broader business world, has that term lost its luster? Or even its credibility? The question of the term’s use and applicability arose recently on…