Cybersecurity leadership lessons from the trenches - Confessions of a reformed technologist

If you want to build a successful cybersecurity culture, then it starts with knowing how to manage people. This can be an extremely bumpy ride for cybersecurity staff who built their careers within a technical background without solid transition.

Many technologists hate doing it, quit jobs to avoid doing it, don’t know how to do it, don’t even know how (or have the courage) to ask for help and some who are struggling don’t even recognise they are. Even if doesn’t sound like you, the fact remains as a new manager, you are going to make mistakes along the way.

But what if it didn’t have to be so painful?

This training session aims to be the kind of talk you wish you had coming into a management role. As such, it caters to the following types of attendees:

• Emerging & aspirational cybersecurity leaders - especially those from a purely technical background and no management background
• Existing yet struggling leaders
• Existing managers who think they are doing a bang-up job and yet can't stop losing staff
• Senior leaders looking for a track to send their new team leads
• Or those chasing 1% gains

This will be a value-packed session. Topics include but not limited to (all with a cybersecurity focus):

• Management & professional basics - assuming no prior knowledge for attendees new to management, while catering to those who come from neurodiverse, underprivileged or diverse backgrounds
• Transitioning from technical to management – letting go of being the most technical person in the room
• Essential psychological skills you need to know going into management (even if you think it is fluff)
• Accepting chaos, leaning into fear – when to use it for fuel and when to ask for help
• Inheriting & building your team
• Reforming non-performers & retaining your champions
• Building and scaling teams, morale & knowledge-transfer
• Tips for building high-performance teams
• Driving security change and culture through service & education
• Real talk – time for Q&A and covering topics that most people don’t usually have the guts to talk about

This is a cybersecurity management crash course from a technologist with a big chip on his shoulder, who thought psychology was garbage, disliked people and authority but loved hacking. He started learning management, sales, and soft skills (still a work in progress), found his faith and now finds he likes people more than tech. On a side note, these skills work well for social engineering too.

His management experience comes from twenty years year in cyber, managing and co-managing teams of up to 20+, onshore and offshore, internal security teams, professional services and CISO experience. He has paid dearly for these lessons - both with an MBA and many painful mistakes along the way (both self-inflicted and observed).

Attendees will walk away armed with essential skills for managing cybersecurity teams, having learned from the mistakes of others so they don’t have to make them.