One habit that can help you earn the trust of other members of your organization is First-Team Awareness. It involves learning from the 'team' that are your peers, and then from there, others throughout the organization.

Particularly for technical folks, there can be a technical bias for approaching things. Yes, there are technically right ways to do things; technically ideal ways to do things. But where that becomes a problem is when it's an entrenched way of thinking that doesn't accommodate business goals, business realities, and opportunities that the business is trying to pursue. And when we get locked into thinking 'this is the only right way to do it’, it becomes unnecessarily adversarial. But there's a way that can blend some of the best aspects of a technical solution with what's organizationally palatable, and organizationally seen as important, that are much more likely to move your strategy ahead.

The other bias here is framing. Cybersecurity people are steeped in technology. They're steeped in understanding all the pieces that go into an environment, processes, policies, perhaps architecture, to understand how these pieces fit together. And there's a model in our heads around what is good and what we'd like to see for the organization. And that is absolutely something that we are expected to bring to the table. The challenge here, and what I would call you to do is, think in terms that cyber security exists to serve the business. And while there may be a technical aspect to addressing cyber security, the reason we do it, and the way to think about it is: what are the business goals and mission that are served by cybersecurity? And letting go of the technical thinking long enough to be able to connect with the business, understand what they want. And then merge the cybersecurity technical aspects into supporting business goals and objectives.

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