Making the Most of Cybersecurity Research
For security companies, the Labs or Research functions are the most expensive areas, whether it comes to developing new products or producing original research. These teams produce work that gets attention with press and brings in prospective clients, while building influence with your existing technical audiences.
Or that’s what leadership usually intends. The issue tends to be that there’s a wide disconnect between marketing, sales, and research/labs teams. Marketing and sales struggle to explain the impact of the research and just aren’t sure how to use highly technical content to demonstrate their technical and product expertise. Technical teams get frustrated by how little their well-intentioned marketing cohorts understand their work.
It’s a frustrating process for both teams, but the real risk is that inaccurate information is sent to press and prospective clients about the technical research. Non-technical PR agencies and marketing teams misrepresent technical research unintentionally and suddenly all the findings in your research report are called into question. Cybersecurity researchers are a cynical bunch (sweeping generalization) and suspect any research that has even a hint of FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt). The research is ignored or dismissed and, in the worst case scenario, your brand takes a hit and loses street cred with your technical audiences who you need as loyal proponents (and potential recruits).
The Missing Piece
What you need is a person or team who can act as a bridge between your technical and marketing teams. These folks aren’t necessarily deeply technical individuals, but they know what questions to ask to get to the real impact of technical content. That’s one of the ways I can help.
Here’s the gist, I:
Edit content your brilliant technical team produces
Create a pitch for press that’s accurate and vetted by your team, but still captures attention
Write up talking points for sales and marketing so that they can describe the impact of the work and why it matters to specific clients and industries
My Background
Starting in the very early years of Duo Security (acquired by Cisco) before a full Duo Labs team ever existed, I worked alongside researchers to understand the impact of their work and reached out to reporters to tell the story. We started earning big press hits, not just in the security sites and podcasts, but in business press like Forbes, Fortune, Wall Street Journal, etc. Leadership was thrilled to get the attention for meaty technical research and to gain a reputation for cutting through the FUD.
I eventually worked with the threat intel and research teams at Cylance (acquired by Blackberry) and Bishop Fox’s research, pentesting, and product teams, doing the same type of work.
Research takes a long time to produce, which means that we on the marketing side of the house need to make the most of each project. You’ll need a lot of derivative content to hit different audiences and meet your team OKRs. I can help with that, too. From the original technical source material, I can produce content for technical practitioners and influencers (research papers, video demos and walk throughs) and for executive business audiences (short-form blog posts, executive summaries, podcasts), and content specifically suited to journalists.
One of Us….One of Us….
You need someone who understands your research team and can talk to them like a nerd instead of a salesbro (sorry). That would be me. I’m a nerd who works well with technical people. And I ask the right questions. Let’s talk and see if I’m a fit for your needs.
