After years of avoiding vendor conversations, I learned that professional courtesy and direct communication create more value than ghosting. Weekly vendor conversations now provide strategic insights about the security landscape, early-stage partnership opportunities, and market intelligence that can’t be found in analyst reports.

Strategy isn’t exclusive to executives - it happens at every organizational level, from individual contributors gathering operational insights to senior leaders making departmental decisions.

After a decade of accidentally falling into security and building teams across multiple domains, I’ve learned that the most successful security professionals share three crucial soft skills: genuine passion for the work, empathy for the teams they impact, and understanding of business context over absolute security.