A PLAYBOOK FOR FORCE MULTIPLYING SECURITY
STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT
Identify Goals and Objectives: Clearly define the goal and the desired outcomes. Make sure you list the key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure success; it’s important to keep track of how things are going so you can course-correct if needed.
Analyze Current Capabilities: Evaluate existing strengths, gaps, and resource availability within the teams and organization.
Identify Leverage Points: List the areas where small investments can yield significant results, such as leveraging existing technology, expertise, or partnerships. Make sure to create a visual map of these points, documentation is a key piece here.
Prioritize Key Areas: A subset of the Leverage Points, focus on high-impact projects and tasks that will deliver the greatest return on investment.
BUILD PARTNERSHIPS AND COLLABORATION
Stakeholder Mapping: Identify key internal and external allies who can contribute to achieving goals of security and build strong relationships with them.
Cross-Functional Teams: Collaborative teams with diverse skillsets are needed to tackle complex security and other challenges. This “team of teams” can leverage each other's expertise to support a larger objective as well.
Shared Vision and Alignment: Ensure all teams and stakeholders understand the overall goals and are committed to working together effectively.
LEVERAGE STREAMLINED TECHNOLOGY AND AUTOMATION
Identify Automation Opportunities: Analyze processes to identify tasks that can be automated to free up human resources for higher-value activities. If something can be automated, automate it. If it can’t but it can be self-served via a web app, service, or script, then do that instead. Manual work should be the last resort.
Focus On Data-Driven Decision Making: Utilize data analytics and AI (carefully) to gain insights and make informed strategic decisions and support automation.
Tools and Platforms: Explore and implement technology that can streamline communication, collaboration, and project management. If you can build it, keep it simple. If you need a vendor, try to “platformize” all needed moving parts under one vendor. Keep it simple.
Lean Operations: Minimize waste in processes and resources. Streamlining operations leads to more effective use of time, money, and effort.
Outsourcing and Partnerships: Identify areas where external partnerships, outsourcing, or leveraging external expertise can complement in-house capabilities and accelerate progress. Treat this with a grain of salt, since it can be both expensive to do and add complexity to the entire plan.
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
Feedback Loops and After Action Reviews (AARs): Establish mechanisms to gather feedback from individuals in each team and use it to identify areas for improvement. Conduct AARs after each successful and failed efforts. Learn from what worked and what didn’t.
Prototyping and “Red Teaming”: Encourage a culture of experimentation to test new ideas and approaches. Red team those ideas, finding issues and gaps before it’s too late.
Remain Fluid: Adopt flexible and iterative processes to adapt to the ever changing world of security and risk, and rapidly deliver value.
SCALING UP WITH MINIMAL COST
Use "Replication": Once an effective process or piece of technology is identified, find ways to replicate it on a larger scale without significantly increasing costs.
Use Modular Systems: Design solutions that can easily be scaled by adding components (people, technology, processes) as needed, rather than completely redesigning systems from the ground up.
EMPOWER EACH INDIVIDUAL AND THE TEAMS
Leadership Development: Foster a leadership culture that encourages initiative, creativity, and ownership within teams. Each member is a leader. Give the junior members the chance to lead often, making sure that a more senior member shadows them.
Development and Training: Provide necessary training and development opportunities to enhance capabilities of individuals across all teams. The more people understand risk management and security in general, the more they will apply the fundamentals.
Delegation and Accountability: Clearly define roles and responsibilities, enabling team members to take ownership and deliver results. Again, focus on decentralized command.
Innovation and Risk-Taking: Encourage a culture that values innovation and is willing to take calculated risks in pursuit of breakthroughs.
Resilience and Persistence: A force-multiplied security team is one that can maintain momentum even when there are challenges. Developing a resilient culture is critical; it will get the team ready when the breach occurs.
IMPORTANT BUSINESS CONSIDERATIONS
Alignment With The Business Strategic Goals: Ensure all force multiplication strategies are aligned with the overall organizational objectives. We do not work in a vacuum. Security is part of a larger world and is here to protect the business and organization.
Communication And Transparency: Clearly communicate the force multiplication strategy to all business leaders to gain buy-in and support. If we can’t have the leadership support this effort, it will most likely fail.
Original source of this playbook.