How can you build a cybersecurity team that is prepared for the future?

To put it into bullet points. 1. Identify Objectives: Define the goals and objectives of the cybersecurity team. 2. Skill Requirements: Assess the skills and expertise required to fulfill the objectives. 3. Resource Allocation: Determine the budget and resources available for building and maintaining the cybersecurity team. 4. Staffing and Roles: Define the roles and responsibilities within the team. L Consider the team's size and structure based on the organization's scale and complexity. 5. Collaboration and Integration: Evaluate how the cybersecurity team will collaborate with other departments or teams within the organization. This is essential for governance. 6. Scalability and Future Needs: Consider growth.

Building a future-ready cybersecurity team requires diversity, inclusion, and neurodiversity. Diverse backgrounds and neurodivergent talents provide unique perspectives and problem-solving abilities. To integrate neurodivergent individuals, raise awareness, adapt recruitment, offer workplace support, mentoring, tailored training, and cultivate an inclusive culture. This approach enhances the team's ability to address cybersecurity challenges and creates an inclusive environment for all members to contribute to success. Increase awareness and educate the team about neurodiversity. Modify recruitment processes to be inclusive of neurodivergent candidates. Provide necessary accommodations and support in the workplace.

Information Security is a complicated field, and an organization needs to be aware of their risks and attack vectors. While this is a tremendous step, what comes after is determining the sustainable level of capability an organization can expect to have. How many engineers can you employ? How many different systems will they need to learn, know, or manage, such as EDR portals, cloud management platforms, vulnerability management systems, and SIEM tools. This will determine the level of skill and manpower needed, and it will be important to determine what your organization will be capable of staffing for and managing. You will also need to consider what you will need to outsource or partner with services and/or MSP's to effectively manage.

Stop hiring your own team. Outsource it. There is more value than you can afford to insource. It is a common failure of technology leaders to try to have control by hiring internally. Have flexibility by hiring externally instead.

Build a cybersecurity team prepared for the future by emphasizing continuous learning. Encourage team members to pursue relevant certifications and engage in ongoing training. Foster a culture of adaptability and innovation, promoting the exploration of emerging technologies and threats. Encourage collaboration and knowledge-sharing within the team. Invest in cross-functional training to ensure versatility. Regularly review and update skill requirements based on industry trends. By prioritizing ongoing education and flexibility, the team remains well-prepared for evolving cybersecurity challenges.

Hire for attitude not necessarily skill. Skills don’t create a cohesive culture or guarantee that employee will stay long term. A positive and collaborative attitude does.

Hire and recruit individuals with multiple skills and with clear ability to grow and develop. Creating and building a team that can support and cover each other is crucial

I've encountered some of the most highly skilled IT and cybersecurity professionals who surprisingly have a solid foundation in PC gaming. While it remains crucial to rigorously assess their credentials and qualifications, it's worth noting that these individuals often bring a fresh and distinctive problem-solving perspective to the field.

Empower your teams to make decisions and do not micro-manage them. Cybersecurity is a massive field and you must encourage your teams to be autonomous and make decisions. They will inevitably get it wrong sometimes which is where you have to mentor and guide them. Technology keeps changing every few months but leadership and empathy is something no AI is going to replace anytime soon

In my experience, understanding the business and the organization culture is key for your team success. Pick the right employees that can fit in your culture (there is no right or wrong here)

Lead with a commitment to excellence, crafting the path as you approach the finish line. Encourage, exemplify, and embody the values and behaviors you wish to see, but remember, it's equally crucial to vividly illustrate the destination you're heading towards. Envision and articulate what excellence looks like, inspiring your team members to aim for the same level of achievement. Actions certainly convey your intent, yet it's the clarity of your vision that ignites the passion and determination to pursue it.

Roles and controls. Get your house in order, keep it there, and simultaneously build out the right roles in conjunction with your HR staff. "The right roles" means the job descriptions are accurate, current, and compensation is attuned to those roles. There's a path in at entry level, and processes and procedures ensure that as you experience attrition, you can hire to replace the role of the person who left. Not easy, but it's always been roles and controls. Plug the holes to be whole. Goal!

Allow for experimentation. Do you have a SOC analyst who has free time and wants to help the pentest team or learn from them? Allow it! This widens the scopes of the team and paves the way for creating a purple team.

Open-to-experiment Culture Team hackathons, dedicated sprint points for research, and testing out different tools are some of the effective ways a security team can inculcate the spirit of growth and learning. For Cybersecurity leaders: As a cybersecurity leader, the burden to fuel such endeavors ride on the manager's shoulders. In my experience, most innovative and efficient cybersecurity teams' capabilities cannot be measured with org metrics or OKRs, but they always shine when there is an incident or a zero-day. Such a team is ready for any challenge and is always one step ahead of the organization. For Cybersecurity Practioners: POC and home labs are the best ways to create a better environment to experiment.

I believe you start with hiring for the right skill-sets and the right fit for your organization. Both are equally important when establishing your team. Once the team is properly assembled, then it comes down to continued learning opportunities in their respective domains of skill-set. Foster an environment where they are encouraged to seek challenges and have the autonomy to do so. Offer incentives for those who continual excel at their jobs, such as paid attendance to conferences or certification training and vouchers.