Author
Deidre Diamond
Founder & CEO, CyberSN
Deidre Diamond founded the largest U.S. cybersecurity workforce intelligence and solutions firm and the non-profit Secure Diversity, promoting diversity and inclusion in cybersecurity. She combines 25 years in technology and workforce solutions, having built large-scale teams at Rapid7 and Motion Recruitment, and creates cultures grounded in emotional intelligence skills: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, social skills, and empathy.
Articles by Deidre Diamond
Why Are So Many Cybersecurity Companies Laying People Off?
How can cybersecurity companies be laying people off when cyber risk is increasing? The answer is bigger than AI. It starts with cheap money ending, product consolidation, changing competition, and a workforce most companies still cannot clearly see. After 30 years building cybersecurity and technology workforces, here is what is really behind the layoffs, and why a cyber company cutting jobs does not mean cybersecurity work is disappearing.
Deidre Diamond · · 8 min read
Your Workforce Changed. Did Your Visibility?
Your workforce is no longer just employees. It is employees, contractors, consultants, MSPs, interns, and now AI agents. Every time work moves between them, capacity, capability, ownership, and risk change. Most organizations have no living view of any of it. Here is why headcount is not workforce intelligence, and why visibility has to be living.
Deidre Diamond · · 5 min read
Manage Up or Get Misrepresented: The Case for Living Job Descriptions
A cybersecurity professional asked for something simple but revealing: put it in my offer letter that my job description gets updated every six months. It is one of the smartest workforce moves I have seen, and it points straight at a problem every leader needs to solve.
Deidre Diamond · · 11 min read
Workforce Intelligence for the Cyber Fusion Model: Securing the People Behind a Unified Operating Model
Cyber Fusion unifies previously siloed cybersecurity disciplines into one operating model for visibility, collaboration, resilience, and risk management. Yet the model is only as strong as the workforce executing it. Here is how Workforce Intelligence gives leaders visibility into the talent ecosystem, employees, contractors, consultants, and MSPs, that a Cyber Fusion model depends on.
Deidre Diamond · · 7 min read
Cybersecurity Assessments Measure Controls. Leaders Need Visibility Into Capabilities.
Security assessments, technology reviews, and organizational charts tell leaders what controls they have, not what their workforce can actually do. Here is why capability coverage, organizational maturity, talent risk, and strategic readiness are the missing layer of intelligence behind every strategy and budget.
Deidre Diamond · · 6 min read
Workforce Risk in Government Cybersecurity: What Your FISMA Scorecard Doesn't Show You
FISMA compliance, zero trust mandates, nation-state threats, and a blended workforce of feds, contractors, and MSPs: the workforce risks government CISOs need Workforce Intelligence to see.
Deidre Diamond · · 9 min read
Operationalizing Workforce Intelligence for Government CISOs
Federal agencies operate blended workforces across GS employees, contractors, and MSPs, yet most government CISOs lack a unified view of who delivers what capability. Workforce Intelligence changes that.
Deidre Diamond · · 9 min read
Managing Workforce Risk in Energy Cybersecurity
OT/ICS capability concentration, NERC CIP compliance coverage gaps, and 24/7 grid operational strain, the workforce risks energy CISOs need Workforce Intelligence to see.
Deidre Diamond · · 9 min read
Why Energy CISOs Need Workforce Intelligence
Energy cybersecurity workforce ecosystems span IT and OT domains with unique complexity. Traditional approaches can’t provide the visibility leaders need. Workforce Intelligence can.
Deidre Diamond · · 8 min read
Managing Workforce Risk in Healthcare Cybersecurity
Capability concentration, compliance coverage gaps, and 24/7 operational strain, the workforce risks healthcare CISOs need Workforce Intelligence to see.
Deidre Diamond · · 9 min read
Why Healthcare CISOs Need Workforce Intelligence
Healthcare cybersecurity workforce ecosystems are uniquely complex. Traditional approaches can’t provide the visibility leaders need. Workforce Intelligence can.
Deidre Diamond · · 8 min read
Managing Workforce Risk in Financial Services Cybersecurity
Regulatory exposure, transaction security concentration, and third-party dependencies, the workforce risks financial services CISOs need Workforce Intelligence to see.
Deidre Diamond · · 9 min read
Why Financial Services CISOs Need Workforce Intelligence
Financial services cybersecurity workforce ecosystems are uniquely complex. Traditional approaches can’t provide the visibility leaders need. Workforce Intelligence can.
Deidre Diamond · · 8 min read
Job Descriptions Are Wrong, and Organizations Are Making Critical Workforce Decisions Based on Them
Every restructuring, budget cycle, and workforce realignment relies on the same flawed data source: job descriptions that no longer reflect reality. Workforce Intelligence replaces assumptions with operational truth.
Deidre Diamond · · 8 min read
The Data Gap in the Boardroom: Why Your Workforce Decisions Are Built on Fiction
Job descriptions are living documents, yet most organizations treat them as static artifacts. When leadership teams make restructuring decisions using outdated documentation and generic titles that obscure actual work, they create invisible operational risk. The workforce is pushing back, and Workforce Intelligence closes the gap.
Deidre Diamond · · 9 min read
Managing Cyber Workforce Risk in 2025
Cyber leaders cannot manage what they cannot see. This piece reframes workforce risk as an intelligence problem, and shows how operational visibility into workload, capability coverage, and team structure helps leaders secure budget, prevent burnout, and align their workforce to strategy.
Deidre Diamond · · 6 min read
The 2025 Cybersecurity Job Market: From Reactive Hiring to Workforce Intelligence
The cybersecurity job market is no longer a question of headcount. Drawing on CyberSN's 2025 U.S. job posting data and SANS workforce research, we examine how leaders are shifting from filling seats to building verifiable capability, and why workforce planning is now a board-level conversation.
Deidre Diamond · · 8 min read
Women in Cybersecurity Discuss New and Old Obstacles for DEI
As diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments come under renewed pressure, four women leading in cybersecurity sat down to discuss what has changed, what has not, and why inclusion is inseparable from workforce resilience. Their conversation reframes DEI as an operational concern: when leaders lose visibility into how their people experience work, they lose visibility into risk.
Deidre Diamond · · 8 min read
Cyber Workforce Risk Management: Addressing Our Greatest Vulnerability in 2025
The greatest vulnerability facing cybersecurity organizations in 2025 isn't a technology gap, it's the absence of intelligence about how the workforce actually operates. Burnout, misaligned workloads, and undefensible headcount are symptoms of one root cause: leaders lack operational visibility into their workforce ecosystem.
Deidre Diamond · · 9 min read
Managing Cyber Threats, Workforce Risks, and AI Challenges
Ransomware and AI-driven threats dominate the security agenda, but the vulnerability most leaders cannot see is their own workforce. This piece reframes burnout and capability strain as a Workforce Intelligence problem, and shows how operational visibility lets leaders manage human risk alongside technical defenses.
Deidre Diamond · · 6 min read
How Cybersecurity Contractors Accelerate Projects and Reduce Workforce Risk
Security leaders are expected to do more with less, leaving teams stretched across daily operations and strategic projects at once. This piece reframes contract workforce augmentation as a workforce optimization decision, one that depends on visibility into where capability is concentrated, where coverage thins, and where workload risk is quietly building.
Deidre Diamond · · 6 min read
Cyber Workforce Risk: The Overlooked Vulnerability
Burnout, trauma, and lost confidence quietly erode security teams long before an attacker does. Treating workforce health as a Workforce Intelligence problem gives leaders the visibility to act before it becomes operational risk.
Deidre Diamond · · 6 min read
The Critical Cyber Roles That Prevent Breaches, and Why Cutting Them Is a Workforce Intelligence Failure
Product Security Engineering and DevSecOps are among the capabilities that quietly prevent breaches. Yet many organizations are reducing exactly these functions while vulnerabilities rise. The real problem isn't budget: it's a lack of visibility into where workforce decisions create operational risk.
Deidre Diamond · · 7 min read
Solutions to Combat Cybersecurity Burnout: From Reaction to Resilience
Burnout is not a wellness footnote: it is an operational workforce risk that degrades the defenses you are investing millions to strengthen. Here are the immediate and long-term solutions leaders can operationalize, and the visibility required to make them work.
Deidre Diamond · · 8 min read
Indicators of Quitting (IOQ): A Workforce Intelligence Signal for Security Leaders
Security teams have spent years operationalizing Indicators of Compromise and Indicators of Attack. The same discipline applies to the workforce. Indicators of Quitting (IOQ) are the early, observable signals that capability is about to walk out the door: disengagement, falling output, rising absence, withdrawal from the team. This piece reframes IOQ not as an HR alert but as a Workforce Intelligence signal, and shows how operational visibility into your workforce ecosystem lets leaders act on departure risk before it becomes an operational event.
Deidre Diamond · · 7 min read
The Importance of Cybersecurity Talent Retention
When experienced security professionals leave, they take capabilities with them that no job posting can replace. Retention is not an HR metric. It is a Workforce Intelligence problem. This piece reframes why people leave around culture, burnout, and career development, and shows how operational visibility into your workforce ecosystem turns retention into a risk you can manage.
Deidre Diamond · · 7 min read
Improving Female Representation in Cybersecurity
Women hold roughly 24% of cybersecurity roles, and just 1% of top executive seats. The path forward is less about a single recruiting fix and more about workforce intelligence: visibility into the capabilities, roles, and inclusive structures that let diverse talent stay and lead.
Deidre Diamond · · 7 min read
AI Secure Guidelines: A Workforce Intelligence Imperative for Security Leaders
CISA and the UK's NCSC released joint Guidelines for Secure AI System Development, endorsed by 23 cybersecurity organizations across two countries. The standards are clear, but standards only hold when the workforce has the capability coverage to apply them. This piece reframes Secure by Design as a Workforce Intelligence challenge before it is a technical one.
Deidre Diamond · · 5 min read
Strategic Cybersecurity Budgets: What CEOs, CISOs, and Boards Are Actually Funding
Most cybersecurity budgets are built as a list of costs: tools, compliance, monitoring, headcount. The leaders who get budget approved, and keep it, treat the security function as a strategic asset and back every line with workforce intelligence. When you can show how your workforce ecosystem supports the strategy, a budget stops looking like spend and starts looking like risk reduction the board can measure.
Deidre Diamond · · 8 min read
Combating the Great Resignation With Great Retention
The Great Resignation pushed cybersecurity turnover to a historical peak, but the real exposure was never a hiring problem. It was a visibility problem. When leaders cannot see how capability, workload, and roles are distributed across their workforce ecosystem, every departure becomes a surprise. This piece reframes retention as a Workforce Intelligence problem leaders can actually measure and manage.
Deidre Diamond · · 7 min read
Talent Exfiltration: An Insider's Guide to the Workforce Risk Hiding in Plain Sight
Recruiters don't pull people out of healthy teams, they extract them from organizations that can't see their own workforce risk. Talent exfiltration is the slow loss of critical capability through disengagement, stress, and structural neglect. This piece reframes it as a Workforce Intelligence problem and shows how operational visibility into your workforce ecosystem lets leaders detect and close the conditions that make their best people leavable.
Deidre Diamond · · 8 min read
Building a Business-Aligned Cybersecurity Team: A Workforce Intelligence Approach
A cybersecurity team only protects the business as well as it is aligned to it. When leadership treats security as a cost center instead of a strategic function, capabilities go undefined, workforce risk goes unseen, and even well-funded programs underperform. Alignment is not a budget line: it is a workforce intelligence problem, and it starts at the top.
Deidre Diamond · · 7 min read
Inclusion Before Diversity
Many organizations pursue diversity and wonder why it never holds. The reason is sequence. Diverse talent does not stay where it is not included, and inclusion is not a hiring outcome: it is an operational condition leaders are responsible for building. This piece reframes inclusion as a workforce intelligence imperative: when leaders cannot see how their people actually experience the work, they cannot manage the risk of losing them.
Deidre Diamond · · 7 min read
Decoding Cybersecurity Roles and Job Titles
Cybersecurity job titles vary wildly from one organization to the next, leaving leaders without a shared language to understand their own workforce. A common taxonomy turns title chaos into capability visibility.
Deidre Diamond · · 6 min read
Four Tips to Improve Your Cybersecurity Job Description
A vague cybersecurity job description is a workforce intelligence problem before it is anything else. Four ways leaders can turn an unclear role into a precise statement of the capability they actually need.
Deidre Diamond · · 6 min read
3 Red Flags in Cybersecurity Job Postings, and What They Reveal About Your Workforce
Experienced security professionals read a job posting and immediately diagnose the organization behind it. The red flags they spot aren't writing problems: they're symptoms of a workforce leadership can't clearly see.
Deidre Diamond · · 7 min read
We Need a New Approach: From Filling Roles to Workforce Intelligence
The old contingency model treated security roles as a numbers game. The real shift leaders need is from volume-driven sourcing to Workforce Intelligence: visibility into capability coverage and operational risk.
Deidre Diamond · · 6 min read