Making the Work of Cybersecurity Experts Impossible to Ignore—In the Best Way
In the world of cybersecurity, no news is good news; it means cybersecurity crises are stopped before they start.
The Achilles Heel to doing a difficult job well for CISOs – and the Security Operations Centers they operate – is that their success can turn cybersecurity and SOCs into strangely invisible places. And invisible operations rarely bode well for executive attention and budgets.
So, this quiet success creates a challenge. When things go smoothly, executive leadership may begin to question the need for extensive cybersecurity investment, precisely because the job is being done with excellence.
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The logic seems simple: “Nothing’s happening, so maybe we don’t need all this.” That mindset, however, ignores a critical truth: the absence of incidents is the product of the cybersecurity team’s relentless, behind-the-scenes effort.
To combat this “out of sight, out of mind” problem, security leaders must elevate the visibility of the SOC and the essential work being done. Alex Lanstein, Chief Technology Officer and Head of Threat Detection for SrikeReady, the industry’s first unified, AI-based, security command center, shares his five strategies for helping CISOs and security experts achieve three key objectives:
- Showcase SOC value
- Keep leadership engaged, and
- Sustain support in a landscape of increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.
Tell the Story in Business Terms
Executives don’t think in exploits and vulnerabilities—they think in risk, cost, and continuity. SOCs must learn to frame their contributions in those terms. Instead of leading with technical jargon, explain how specific efforts avoided data breaches, financial loss, or reputational harm.
For instance, proactively blocking an unknown phishing domain may not sound exciting—but if you show that a similar domain caused millions in damages elsewhere, it becomes a compelling story of smart prevention.
Make the Invisible Work Visible
Much of a SOC’s impact happens in the background: checking threat intelligence feeds, reviewing alerts, and hunting through logs for suspicious activity that never triggered alarms. This quiet diligence often goes unnoticed.
Simulate Attacks to Show Readiness
Fire drills are routine in physical security—why not in cybersecurity? Simulations are a powerful, low-risk way to show the value of your security infrastructure.
Running controlled attack scenarios helps validate detection and response capabilities, identify gaps, and demonstrate preparedness. Even better: include executives in a live or recorded tabletop exercise. Show them how close a simulation came to mimicking a real-world breach—and how the SOC would have contained it.
These exercises turn abstract threat prevention into something real, memorable, and valuable.
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Celebrate the (Preventative) Wins
While cyberattacks that are thwarted may not make headlines, they should still be celebrated. Highlight preventative successes during leadership updates or internal newsletters—especially when your team stopped something that caused damage elsewhere.
Create digestible summaries: “Detected a ransomware strain three months before it was featured in a major threat intel report,” or “Blocked access to a known exfiltration domain that affected a peer organization.” These wins help leadership understand that their investment is paying off.
Benchmark, Track, and Share Progress
Executives appreciate data—but only when it’s meaningful. Track how your SOC is performing over time using metrics that align with risk reduction, operational efficiency, and threat readiness.
Include:
- Time to detect and respond
- False positive rates by tool/vendor
- Mean time to complete threat hunts
- Percent of coverage gaps filled over time
These metrics, when shared regularly, communicate momentum and maturity—two key elements that reinforce the need for ongoing support and improvement.
Final Thoughts
Cybersecurity doesn’t sell itself—especially when it’s working perfectly. SOCs must take the lead in telling their story, translating technical effort into business value, and proactively showing how invisible work prevents visible disasters.
By following these five strategies—telling stories in business terms, making invisible work visible, simulating attacks, celebrating quiet wins, and benchmarking progress—security leaders can stay top of mind and earn the support they need to keep the enterprise safe from tomorrow’s threats.
