Full Report
IT teams are expected to communicate security threats and other risks to business leaders. This is more effective when IT and cybersecurity professionals are trained in the operations and language of the business.
Analysis Summary
# Bridging the Communication Gap Between Cybersecurity and Business Leadership
## Key Points
- The core issue identified is the persistent struggle for many cybersecurity professionals to effectively communicate the level of business risk associated with specific security threats to business leaders.
- This lack of effective communication stems from cybersecurity professionals often not communicating in language business leaders can easily comprehend.
- A majority (81%) of surveyed cybersecurity professionals learn leadership skills primarily through observation, which risks perpetuating existing communication shortcomings if senior leaders already struggle in this area.
- Communication skills are ranked as the most important attribute for a cybersecurity leader (85% of respondents), yet only about one in five survey respondents identified this skill as crucial—highlighting a major disconnect in perceived importance.
- Improving this situation requires cybersecurity leaders to better understand business operations and the organization's appetite for risk (which focuses on weighing risk versus reward).
- While formal organizational training is often lacking due to budget or appreciation, professionals must take the initiative to acquire business acumen.
## Threat Actors
- No specific adversarial threat actors, campaigns, or TTPs are mentioned, as the focus is on the internal organizational challenge of risk communication.
## TTPs
- No specific technical TTPs are mentioned. The focus is on the *process* TTP of communication failure rather than digital attack techniques.
## Affected Systems
- The primary "affected system" is the **communication channel** between cybersecurity staff and business management, leading to potential misaligned risk prioritization.
## Mitigations
- Cybersecurity professionals must acquire business acumen and understand how the organization achieves its goals, especially as business processes become more vulnerable to cyber threats.
- Professionals need to provide business leaders with an accurate assessment of the level of risk faced, phrased in a risk/reward context understood by business management.
- Organizations should ideally provide training focused on business operations for their cybersecurity teams.
- Individual cybersecurity professionals should use initiative to acquire business expertise through on-the-job learning or external curricula.
## Conclusion
The report identifies a critical organizational and process failure: IT and cybersecurity teams are routinely failing to translate technical threats into quantifiable business risk for executive leadership. This gap is rooted in inadequate training, a self-perpetuating cycle of observational leadership development, and a failure among many security professionals to prioritize business communication and acumen over purely technical skill sets. Addressing this requires targeted training on business operations and a fundamental shift in how security risks are assessed and articulated to decision-makers.