Overcoming Resistance: How vCISOs Build Influence and Drive Security Culture

Solving security challenges goes beyond the right tools and policies. It requires cooperation from people. When people don’t fully understand or buy into security initiatives, resistance emerges. For CISOs, shaping a strong security culture is already a challenge—but for vCISOs, the task is even more difficult.

As external consultants, vCISOs must establish credibility, gain trust and drive security transformation without the benefit of being embedded in the company’s daily operations. This article provides actionable strategies for vCISOs to build engagement among employees, while establishing their role as a business partner and helping them grow their own business.

Why a Security Culture Matters

A security culture is the shared norms, values, beliefs and practices that define the security approach in the organization. A strong and healthy security culture ensures that all employees are aware of and act on the need to protect sensitive information.

When security becomes part of the organizational ethos, employees are more likely to follow established security protocols consistently. They also become better-skilled at recognizing potential threats, such as phishing attempts or suspicious behavior. In such cases, they will report the incidents promptly, enabling swift mitigation.

A strong security culture also means that security is embedded into workflows and processes. This includes secure coding practices, implementing MFA, incident response plans where everyone knows their role, and more. These also require cooperation from people. Over time the workforce becomes a barrier to attacks, creating a strong and resilient organization.

In other words, security tools depend on human engagement to function effectively. Even advanced security frameworks can be undermined by human error or ignorance. This means that a strong security culture is integral to the CISO’s and vCISO’s success.

How CISOs Shape the Security Culture

Shaping the security culture is the responsibility of the CISO, and it relies heavily on their ability to mobilize and engage the people within the organization. This means they need to inspire and activate employees, fostering a sense of accountability and encouraging action.

Doing so includes, for example, showing how security aligns with the company’s broader mission and goals and its role in building the company’s reputation and avoiding legal fines and penalties. It also means building cross-functional alignment and encouraging collaboration across IT, security and operations with the rest of the organization’s business units. This requires ongoing communication, making security concepts accessible to all employees and emphasizing the potential consequences of security breaches.

Why It’s Harder for vCISOs to Mobilize People

Mobilizing people is challenging for anyone, but for a vCISO the task is even more complex. This is due to the fact that a vCISO is an external consultant and contractor to the organization rather than an organic part of it. In many cases, the vCISO also isn’t physically present, further creating a sense of isolation and separation. This has the following impact:

• Difficulties Establishing Trust and Credibility – Employees might perceive the vCISO as disconnected from the company’s culture, ways of work and KPIs. This erodes credibility and trust in the vCISO’s decision-making. As a result, employees might overlook or de-prioritize what the vCISO asks of them, thinking they have other, more important, tasks to complete. In certain cases, an “us vs. them” mentality might even develop, leading to antagonism and blatant ignoring of what the vCISO requests. The employee view is not completely unbiased. vCISOs have limited visibility into operations and internal structures, making it difficult to navigate internal politics and understand decision-making nuances.
• Time Constraints – vCISOs often face pressure to produce immediate results and show quick wins. This can lead to a focus on technical solutions, risk management, or compliance. While these are critical tasks, they often come at the expense of soft skills like communication and relationship-building, which are the foundation for employee engagement.
• Reliance on Digital Communication – Digital tools such as video conferencing and chat help overcome communication barriers across cities and continents. They drive productivity and help break down work silos. However, it’s far more difficult to engage employees through these mediums. The nuances of body language, tone and rapport present in face-to-face interactions are key to connecting with people. This makes it harder for a vCISO to inspire trust, enthusiasm and collaboration.
• Lack of Team – vCISOs serve as an external security and IT team for their clients. In some cases, this means they do not have an internal team dedicated to assisting them in driving security initiatives. Instead, they rely on a network of stakeholders and ambassadors scattered across the organization. The absence of a core team means there is no internal assistance with communicating and creating enthusiasm, making it more challenging to drive organizational change.

Practical Solutions for vCISOs to Mobilize and Engage People

Let’s get to the most important part – what vCISOs can do about these challenges. By following this list of strategies, MSPs, MSSPs and vCISOs can provide strong security and compliance services AND foster a security culture, while positioning themselves as excellent service providers, driving their own growth.

1. Establish Credibility Quickly

Trust and credibility are the foundation of long-term leadership. But as an external consultant, trust isn’t given – it’s earned. Early and quick wins will help you quickly build your reputation in the organization, and demonstrate your expertise and ability to deliver results. This will encourage people to follow you and your guidelines.

Examples of quick wins include:

• Quick risk assessments – Identify a gap in a certain defense or workflow and provide an insightful analysis.
• Map out a compliance or security framework and where the organization stands on meeting it.
• Generating a number of new policies.
• Showing a report of the current status.
• Creating a security plan for the upcoming 3 months and assigning responsibilities.
• Sharing a report of a recent vulnerability and how it impacts the organization.

Many of these actions can be automated and performed with minimal effort using a vCISO platform.

Read more about how to drive quick wins in the playbook “Your First 100 Days as a vCISO – 5 Steps to Success”.

2. Develop Strong Relationships with Leadership

Business leadership guides the company’s strategy and direction. Leadership that is engaged in security, signals to employees that they should incorporate security into their day-to-day as well. Therefore, make sure to work closely with business executives, aligning security with strategic business objectives and getting their buy-in for security initiatives. This requires demonstrating how cybersecurity investments support broader organizational goals, such as revenue growth, compliance, or customer trust.

To do so, schedule consistent briefings with leadership to communicate progress, challenges and upcoming plans. Tailor your communication to the priorities of leadership—e.g., financial impact, risk mitigation and operational efficiency. Use reports and real-world examples to illustrate the impact of cybersecurity initiatives.

Read more on how to generate effective reports here.

3. Leverage Internal Champions

Security-minded employees can act as liaisons with the organization, advocating for security and encouraging security practices. They also act as a reminder to the existence of a security leader in the organization, even if you’re not physically present. This is true if you don’t have a team on-site, but even if you do.

Start by identifying the right individuals. Use metrics like prior engagement in security training, job roles with high exposure to sensitive information, or demonstrated interest in security. Then, provide them with resources and tools like regular briefings, templates for team-level discussions and exclusive access to security updates. These can be used to showcase their  expertise to engage and encourage all employees to follow them.

You can also establish a community for champions, where they can share experiences, challenges, and successes to foster collaboration and maintain motivation.

Since this activity is somewhat voluntary, you will need to find other ways to compensate them. Acknowledge their contributions through rewards, shoutouts in company meetings, or career growth opportunities. This will help encourage sustained enthusiasm.

4. Become an Ally, Not an Enforcer

Security is often perceived as a blocker to business, hindering productivity, delaying the completion of tasks and creating internal “noise”. Overcoming this challenge requires positioning security as a tool that helps employees succeed.

A CISO must not only integrate cybersecurity with the organization’s business objectives, but also as part of employee KPIs. Implement both strategic and tactical thinking to do so, addressing business needs with daily operations.

Start by conducting listening sessions with employees to understand their pain points of integrating security. Then, adapt security policies to minimize disruptions to workflows, ensuring they align with business objectives. Finally, work with managers to implement security practices into employee tasks. You can also create enthusiasm by sharing examples where security measures have enabled business success, such as preventing data breaches that could have harmed reputation or profits.

5. Adapt Communication Styles

You have multiple clients, each one requiring a different tone and communication style. This is also true for the departments working at each company you work with. Understand your audience and adjust communication styles accordingly.

1. IT Teams – Use technical language, detailed processes and emphasize system-level implications.
2. Executives – Focus on business outcomes, ROI and strategic alignment.
3. For General Employees – Keep language simple, relatable, and emphasize practical benefits or personal impact.

Use a variety of communication methods such as emails, newsletters, webinars, and instant messaging platforms to ensure the message reaches everyone effectively. Whenever you can, conduct in-person meetings, workshops, or town halls to establish trust and encourage open dialogue.

6. Showcase Professionalism

Build your reputation by establishing your expertise. Begin with a clear introduction of your qualifications and relevant expertise. Highlight certifications, years of experience and any notable projects. Use concrete examples to build credibility, and include both hard and soft metrics. Connect the organization to your success by presenting a clear plan of action. Outline the steps, expected outcomes and benefits to employees and the organization as a whole.

7. Use a vCISO Platform

A vCISO platform is an automated platform that provides and generates everything required to provide vCISO services at scale. This includes risk and compliance assessments, security and compliance gap analysis, tailored policies, strategic remediation plans with prioritized tasks, tools for ongoing task management and risk management, security progress tracking and customer-facing reports.

By using a vCISO platform, you can:

• Build Trust and Credibility in Your Expertise – A vCISO platform consolidates your knowledge, frameworks and strategies in one place and provides insights and next steps. This builds your security and compliance knowledge, allows you to provide expert insights and tailored recommendations, and presents you as a well-organized and dependable expert. These capabilities instill confidence in your ability to address challenges and implement meaningful security solutions, creating trust among employees.
• Enhance Leadership Communication with Reports – With a vCISO platform, you can generate clear, actionable reports that turn complex security information into understandable insights for leadership, both technical and non-technical. Create reports that showcase progress, risks and next steps. This will demonstrate your value and get executive buy-in.
• Collaborate Seamlessly with Client Teams – A vCISO platform allows for seamless ongoing communication through collaborative project management. You can create, assign and track tasks. This will get buy-in, foster alignment and create accountability.
• Use Saved Time to Invest in Relationships – A vCISO platform automates workflows like risk assessments, compliance mapping and tracking, and report creation. This efficiency allows you to redirect your time and resources to the softer skills required to mobilize people: building relationships with key stakeholders, strengthening bonds and fostering collaboration.

Final Thoughts

Security is a people-driven initiative. The more employees feel engaged and see security as an enabler rather than a blocker, the stronger the organization becomes. A vCISO platform can help service providers protect their clients and help engage employees, driving both security success and business growth.

Schedule a demo to learn more about Cynomi vCISO platforms.