Building Security Teams That Scale
Leading engineering teams in the cybersecurity space presents unique challenges that combine technical complexity with the critical nature of protecting organizations from evolving threats. Having led teams at both Cymptom (startup) and Tenable (enterprise), I've learned that successful security engineering leadership requires a delicate balance of technical expertise, strategic thinking, and people management.
The Startup vs Enterprise Dynamic
In a cybersecurity startup like Cymptom, you're often building products that don't exist yet. The team needs to be nimble, innovative, and comfortable with uncertainty. Every decision can make or break the company, and the pressure to deliver is immense.
At Tenable, the challenges are different but equally complex. You're working with established products that thousands of customers depend on daily. The stakes are high, and the engineering decisions you make impact millions of users worldwide.
Key Principles for Security Engineering Leadership
1. Security-First Mentality
Every engineering decision must be evaluated through a security lens. This doesn't mean sacrificing functionality for security, but rather finding ways to build security into the foundation of your products.
2. Continuous Learning
The threat landscape evolves rapidly. As a leader, you need to foster a culture of continuous learning and experimentation. Encourage your team to stay current with emerging threats and technologies.
3. Cross-Functional Collaboration
Security engineering doesn't exist in a vacuum. Successful teams collaborate closely with product, sales, and customer success teams to understand real-world security challenges and build solutions that actually solve problems.
Building the Right Team
The most successful security engineering teams I've led have had a mix of:
- Security experts who understand the threat landscape
- Systems engineers who can build scalable, reliable infrastructure
- Product engineers who can translate security concepts into user-friendly features
- DevOps engineers who ensure security is built into the development pipeline
Measuring Success
In cybersecurity, traditional engineering metrics like velocity and uptime are important, but they're not enough. You also need to measure:
- Security posture improvements for your customers
- Threat detection accuracy and false positive rates
- Time to remediation for identified vulnerabilities
- Customer security outcomes and risk reduction
The Future of Security Engineering Leadership
As AI and automation become more prevalent in cybersecurity, leaders need to focus on:
- Human-AI collaboration - ensuring AI augments human expertise rather than replacing it
- Ethical considerations - making sure security tools are used responsibly
- Skill development - helping teams adapt to new technologies while maintaining core security principles
The role of security engineering leadership is more critical than ever. As threats become more sophisticated, we need leaders who can build teams that are not just technically excellent, but also strategic, collaborative, and focused on real-world impact.
This post reflects my personal experiences and opinions. The cybersecurity landscape is constantly evolving, and what works today may need adaptation tomorrow.