After working for 17 years in IT industry and working on product deliverables and trainings for 1000+ IT professionals I understood and witnessed that it is quite necessary that communication skill is the most crucial part of your career growth. Only technical knowledge is not important; it is the default assumed skill set. But having good communication skill with it stands you out from others and help you to effectively and smoothly with others. As per the Pew Research Centre in 2024 in a recent survey, 85% of workers identified "interpersonal skills" and "written and spoken communication skills" as "extremely or very important" to being successful in today’s economy.
As technical tasks (coding, data analysis, routine processing) become increasingly automated or assisted by AI, the "human" elements—communication, empathy, negotiation, and leadership—have become the new "hard" skills that employers prioritize to differentiate talent. Technical expertise got you into the room, but communication skills are what will get you the promotion. It’s a concept backed by over 100 years of research: 85% of your long-term career success depends on your ability to connect, communicate, and lead and only 15% from technical skills (1918 by Charles Riborg Mann for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching). So good communication is no more underrated but it is the very crucial skill in your professional career.
In the cybersecurity world, we spend years mastering firewalls, penetration testing, and vulnerability assessment. We speak the language of code, protocols, and exploits. But there is a silent vulnerability in most of the cyber professional’s toolkit: The Communication Gap. Whether you are explaining a risk to a non-technical stakeholder or defending your findings in a high-stakes meeting, how you communicate determines your professional impact.
When I work as an ethical hacker on the finding for the vulnerabilities in the product and if I found the vulnerabilities then how I report to those vulnerabilities with technical knowledge plays a very important role in my role as an ethical hacker and pen tester. Just a experience I am sharing sometimes a get some duplicate defects and when I check the reports and keep on scrolling it to understand it properly, I find that either the summary is very lengthy, the steps are not proper missing many things, the important screenshots, overexplaining concepts which made me close the report not to continue to read it through. That time I get question in mind. After getting so much expertise for cyber knowledge the person is not able to express it rightly which is a loss to the person as well as the treat to this industry because this kind of explanations may not convince the technical stakeholder so high chances of risk to the product and to the non-stakeholder so high chances of loss to the product and customer escalations and leakage of data.
The person who is having better communication skill also can have better documenting skill. So in cybersecurity how much technical knowledge you have it matters a lot when it is combined with the good presentation and communication skill. Good communication skill means a balanced approach to express the knowledge not being overconfident and over smart.
The Cybersecurity Context:
Cybersecurity isn't just about defending systems; it’s about managing people. Being a cybersecurity professional we handle the most sensitive customer centric data which if get compromised there is high risk of loss of data, debit or credit card details of the customers, may be their medical history and what not. So it is the high responsibility of cybersecurity professionals to put forward the findings or a vulnerability in a product with clarity and structure so that it should be understood rightly to the technical stakeholders as well as the business impact of it to the non-technical stakeholders. When we perform a VAPT (Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing), our success doesn't end when the bug is found. It ends when the management understands the risk and authorizes the fix.
Take an example suppose you found a vulnerability in a product and you need to discuss this with the CEO of the organization. Do you think the CEO is more interested in the technical dept of that issue, like what kind of vulnerability is this? How did you clarify it? Whether it is intermittent issue or a regular one? How many platforms you used to verify it? Etc. And opposite to this if you want to explain this issue to the Security Manager then do you think he is more interested in knowing what is the priority of the issue? What is its impact on product? What is the impact on the business? How many customers would get affected by this? Is your tech support team will be flooded with support calls? Etc. So this understanding you will get when you have clarity of your knowledge that how it is impacting on the product and so on the organization. You start understanding that the Security Manager would be more interested in the technical side of the vulnerability to explain and the CEO would be interested more to the business side of the product for the organization. And so, if you have better communication skill it will help you in a great way to structure your explanations to the right audience while not overexplaining concepts, putting forward the right information without being silent for the on-the-spot questions in the meetings and confidently presenting this.
If you cannot bridge the gap between "technical
vulnerability" and "business impact," your findings may be
ignored. If you fail to explain the technical vulnerability or technical
concepts in the cybersecurity you fail to convince people for the right
findings, to get noticed, to get recognized and trusted. So it may slow down
your career growth as well as it impacts your future cybersecurity career
exposure too. And so after observing this pain and trying to fix it I founded
the “The Human Firewall - Cyber Communication Coaching” company.
Soft Skills as a Security Layer:
Think of "The Human Firewall – Cyber Communication
coaching" as your first line of defense. A strong communicator in a
cybersecurity role:
- Simplifies
Complexity: Translates technical jargon into business-ready insights.
- Influences
Decision-Making: Builds the necessary trust to get security budgets
approved.
- Navigates
Crisis: Maintains composure and clarity during a breach or
high-pressure incident.
Practical Steps to Improve:
- Know
Your Audience: Don’t explain the technical mechanics of an SQL
Injection to a CEO; explain the data privacy and revenue risk.
- Practice
Active Listening: In incident response, the most important information
often comes from listening to users, not just monitoring logs.
- Structure
Your Reports: Use the "Executive Summary first, Details
second" approach.
Conclusion: Your Career, Upgraded
Communication is not a "soft" skill; it is a hard requirement for senior roles. As you move from technical execution to leadership, your ability to articulate the value of security will be the defining factor in your career growth.
Call to Action (CTA):
Are you ready to bridge the gap in your own career?
I’ve developed different programs which are designed specifically for
cybersecurity professionals who want to master the art of professional
communication and land their next big role.
About the Author & The Human Firewall
Chhaya Shinde is a computer engineer and cybersecurity professional with over 17 years of IT industry experience
To solve this, she founded The Human Firewall – Cyber Communication Coaching
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