Present Security to Executive Stakeholders

Learn how to communicate security effectively to obtain support from decision makers.

Analyst Perspective

Build and deliver an effective security communication to your executive stakeholders.

As a security leader, you’re tasked with various responsibilities to ensure your organization can achieve its goals while its most important assets are being protected. However, when communicating security to executive stakeholders, challenges can arise in determining what topics are pertinent to present. Changes in the security threat landscape coupled with different business goals make identifying how to present security more challenging. Having a communication framework for presenting security to executive stakeholders will enable you to effectively identify, develop, and deliver your communication goals while obtaining the support you need to achieve your objectives. Ahmad Jowhar Research Specialist, Security & Privacy Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Info-Tech Insight

Security presentations are not a one-way street. The key to a successful executive security presentation is having a goal for the presentation and verifying that you have met your goal.

Your challenge

As a security leader, you need to communicate security effectively to executive stakeholders in order to obtain support for your security objectives.

• When it comes to presenting security to executive stakeholders, many security leaders find it challenging to convey the necessary information in order to obtain support for security objectives.
• This is attributed to various factors, such as an increase in the threat landscape, changes to industry regulations and standards, and new organizational goals that security has to align with.
• Furthermore, with the limited time to communicate with executive stakeholders, both in frequency and duration, identifying the most important information to address can be challenging.

76% of security leaders struggle in conveying the effectiveness of a cybersecurity program.

62% find it difficult to balance the risk of too much detail and need-to-know information.

41% find it challenging to communicate effectively with a mixed technical and non-technical audience.

Source: Deloitte, 2022

Common obstacles

There is a disconnect between security leaders and executive stakeholders when it comes to the security posture of the organization:

• Executive stakeholders are not confident that their security leaders are doing enough to mitigate security risks.
• The issue has been amplified, with security threats constantly increasing across all industries.
• However, security leaders don’t feel that they are in a position to make themselves heard.
• The lack of organizational security awareness and support from cross-functional departments has made it difficult to achieve security objectives (e.g. education, investments).
• Defining an approach to remove that disconnect with executive stakeholders is of utmost importance for security leaders, in order to improve their organization’s security posture.

9% of boards are extremely confident in their organization’s cybersecurity risk mitigation measures.

77% of organizations have seen an increase in the number of attacks in 2021.

56% of security leaders claimed their team is not involved when leadership makes urgent security decisions.

Source: EY, 2021

Info-Tech’s methodology for presenting security to executive stakeholders

Develop a structured process for communicating security to your stakeholders

Security presentations are not a one-way street
The key to a successful executive security presentation is having a goal for the presentation and verifying that you have met your goal.

Identifying your goals is the foundation of an effective presentation
Defining your drivers and goals for communicating security will enable you to better prepare and deliver your presentation, which will help you obtain your desired outcome.

Harness the power of data
Leveraging data and analytics will help you provide quantitative-based communication, which will result in a more meaningful and effective presentation.

Take your audience on a journey
Developing a storytelling approach will help engage with your audience.

Win your audience by building a rapport
Establishing credibility and trust with executive stakeholders will enable you to obtain their support for security objectives.

Tactical insight
Conduct background research on audience members (i.e. professional background) to help understand how best to communicate with them and overcome potential objections.

Tactical insight
Verifying your objectives at the end of the communication is important, as it ensures you have successfully communicated to executive stakeholders.

Project deliverables

This blueprint is accompanied by a supporting deliverable which includes five security presentation templates.

Report on Security Initiatives Template showing how to inform executive stakeholders of security initiatives.		Security Metrics Template showing how to inform executive stakeholders of current security metrics that would help drive future initiatives.
Security Incident Response & Recovery Template showing how to inform executive stakeholders of security incidents, their impact, and the response plan.		Security Funding Request Template showing how to inform executive stakeholders of security incidents, their impact, and the response plan.

Key template:

Template showing how to inform executive stakeholders of proactive security and risk initiatives.

Blueprint benefits