Upskilling security teams: Breaking down silos and elevating expertise

Cybersecurity isn’t just about technology — it’s about people. Security teams are made up of professionals with diverse backgrounds and skill sets, all working toward the same objective: stopping threats. Yet, too often, these teams remain isolated within rigid structures, creating gaps that attackers readily exploit. The reality is that threats don’t respect silos, and defenders can’t afford to be confined by them.

Even before today’s pressures, recruiting and retaining cybersecurity talent was a persistent challenge. Burnout rates are high, and the industry faces an ongoing talent shortage. According to a 2024 Proofpoint survey, 53% of CISOs experienced or witnessed burnout in the past year. This staffing deficit increases workloads, making it harder for security teams to operate effectively.

With threats evolving at an unprecedented pace, maximizing expertise and efficiency is critical. But outdated team structures, siloed intelligence and reactive workflows prevent organizations from responding as quickly as they need to. The solution? Breaking down silos, elevating expertise, and fostering a culture of continuous learning.

Security is about mindset, not just technology

Security is an ecosystem. A network engineer may understand infrastructure but have little experience with malware analysis. A SOC analyst may be great at reading logs but never have written a YARA rule. Threat intelligence professionals may track adversary behavior but lack hands-on forensic skills.

Despite these differences, security roles often remain rigid. SOC analysts detect, incident responders investigate and threat intelligence teams research. But what if those lines weren’t so firm? What if a SOC analyst had access to the same intelligence insights as a CTI specialist? What if an incident responder could immediately retrieve forensic data without waiting on another team?

Security teams need to recognize that their roles overlap. A SOC analyst investigating an alert is often doing work similar to an incident responder. A threat intelligence specialist researching an adversary’s tactics is uncovering insights that could help SOC analysts better detect emerging threats. By integrating workflows and improving cross-team collaboration, security teams can ensure they are working toward the same goal, rather than duplicating effort or missing critical connections.

When security teams share expertise and integrate workflows, they become faster and more effective. And faster, smarter teams stop more threats — before damage is done.

The persistent challenge: Have we seen this before?

One of the most frustrating questions in security is deceptively simple: Have we seen this or a variant of this before? 

A new ransomware strain makes headlines, and the CISO asks their team: Are we exposed? Suddenly, the clock is ticking.

Security teams scramble — querying logs, sifting through alerts, and trying to piece together an answer. Weeks of effort, countless resources, and the best response they can offer is: Probably not.

That’s not good enough. Attackers don’t operate on defenders’ timelines, and security teams shouldn’t be stuck playing catch-up.

Elevating analysts: From reactive triage to investigation

Right now, security analysts are drowning in alerts, reacting rather than proactively identifying threats. This isn’t sustainable — especially in already understaffed environments.

Security teams don’t just need more dashboards or automation. They need insight — the ability to see connections between threats, recognize patterns, and make decisions faster. When analysts move beyond reactive triage to proactive investigation, everything changes.

Ideally, when a SOC analyst triages an alert, they should have access to historical data, variant discovery tools, and intelligence insights in one place. Instead of simply verifying a detection, they should be investigating with full context. By breaking down silos and integrating intelligence, teams can eliminate bottlenecks and respond with confidence.

The giant hole in security — and how to fill it

Most enterprise security stacks include the usual suspects — firewalls, proxies, EDR, SIEMs. Yet, there’s still a glaring hole in security operations: visibility into past threats.

Logs are brittle — meaning a hash must match exactly, or it won’t match at all — and searching them is slow. EDR tools only detect what’s happening now., and EDR tools only detect what’s happening now. Organizations often assume that if a security tool didn’t alert on something, it wasn’t a problem. But what about threats that weren’t recognized at the time?

Security teams need to do more than detect threats as they occur — they need to answer, Was this ever here? And they need that answer fast.

Without this capability, teams waste weeks digging through logs, only to arrive at “probably not.” That’s inefficient, expensive and leaves organizations vulnerable.

Doing three jobs at once — Without the overhead

Security professionals wear multiple hats, yet their tools often confine them to a single role at a time. The truth is, SOC analysts, threat intelligence professionals, and incident responders all share the same mission — identifying and mitigating threats — but they often work in isolation.

An integrated approach changes that. When analysts have access to historical data, variant discovery, and threat intelligence in a unified workspace, they’re no longer just verifying detections — they’re conducting full-scale investigations. By merging security disciplines and automating intelligence-sharing, teams can eliminate unnecessary bottlenecks and act decisively.

Threat actors don’t operate in silos — so defenders shouldn’t either. If an incident responder is investigating a breach, they should be able to pull in threat intelligence insights immediately, rather than waiting on a separate team’s report. If a SOC analyst notices an anomaly, they should have the context to determine whether it aligns with known adversary tactics.

Security teams should be collaborating seamlessly, not waiting on email responses or ticket approvals just to access the data they need. The key to stronger security isn’t more tools — it’s ensuring that the right people have access to the right information at the right time.

The future of security: Continuous learning and adaptation

Cybersecurity isn’t static. Attackers evolve constantly. If defenders don’t, they lose. The best security teams aren’t just the ones with the most expensive tools — they’re the ones that embrace learning, cross-training, and continuous improvement.

At the end of the day, security isn’t just about responding to threats — it’s about building smarter defenders. That starts with upskilling our teams — today.