Research: Security Needs to Bust the Silos

What is a primary barrier to security teams being able to maximize their impact within their organizations? According to 75 percent of chief security officers, it’s organizational silos and fragmented data.

That finding is from the Clarity Factory’s 2025 Chief Security Officer Survey, led by researcher Rachel Briggs, OBE. The report was published today, 16 September, and it contains a treasure trove of data and guidance across a broad spectrum of security areas. ASIS International sponsored the project along with Ontic and Emergent Risk International.

The report covers such wide-ranging security topics as the types of risks security leaders face, insider risk, intelligence, and perceptions of and approaches to artificial intelligence (AI).

It also examines how security functions are organized, what they are responsible for, and what skills they need to be effective. One of the key findings of the report was: “The corporate security portfolio has grown in recent years, both in direct areas of accountability and in expectations that they will partner across the business.”

The following are some of the report’s key findings in these areas.

The survey provided a long list of business functions and asked which ones CSOs were accountable for, which ones they worked on but were not primarily accountable, and which ones they were not involved in. The list of functions that more than 80 percent of CSOs report they have primary accountability will sound straightforward to any security leader: travel security, security audits, executive protection, security culture awareness training, threat intelligence, protecting staff and constituents (including workplace violence prevention), and security at global meetings and events. Just a tick below 80 percent was asset management, as well as risk management—and it’s risk management that is particularly interesting, even if it is not surprising.

Security’s importance in risk management has grown over the years, and risk management is what takes security beyond the protective world of guns, guards, and gates. Risk management gives security a prominent, proactive role rather than a strictly reactionary one. Having risk management as a function of primary importance to security also requires security to know, understand, and interact with other business units.

Others do as well: More than 60 percent of CSOs reported crisis management as an area of primary accountability, business continuity was a primary responsibility for more then 40 percent, and while things like business intelligence and disaster recovery fell below 40 percent of CSOs with primary accountability, the vast majority reported that they are involved with these areas. This all underscores why security’s big bugaboo is dealing with silos and fragmented data.

“CSOs increasingly see partnership across the business as non-negotiable to the success of corporate security,” Briggs explained in the report. “They rank ‘data and organizational silos’ as one of the top three obstacles to the effectiveness of corporate security.”

More than half of CSOs reported that they collaborate with the following business units on a regular basis:

• Facilities
• Executive leadership
• Legal and compliance
• HR
• Cybersecurity
• Health and safety
• Communications/marketing/external relations
• IT

All of those functions are pretty standard security partners, except perhaps the communications/marketing/external relations function. The high degree of regular contact with that functions highlights security’s role in managing risks around a company’s brand.

“A growing number of CSOs are building internal relationships with the teams that help leaders understand social and political issues and their impact on the business,” Briggs wrote. “CSOs recognize that they have intelligence pertaining to these trends and will be responsible for mitigating related security risks and managing incidents and crises.”

So, what can security leaders do to overcome those silos and ensure security is contributing as a valued partner?

It’s not surprising that communications, strategic thinking, and collaboration and teamwork are the number one, two, and three executive competencies CSOs said were most important.

But there is one skill the report lists that may be surprising: storytelling.

“A CSO’s most important role in today’s complex and volatile business environment is that of a storyteller,” Briggs wrote in the report.

She doesn’t mean tales of glory on the golf course or talking about the latest parenting travail, although building connections with people outside of work contexts has advantages. She is talking about telling the story of security and risk, rather than relating facts that support a particular security or risk priority. Finding a way to relate those facts in ways that make an emotional connection with your audience is vital.

In the report, Briggs quotes executive coach Jeff Gothelf to explain why the skill of storytelling is important:

Telling a compelling story is how you build credibility for yourself and your ideas. It’s how you inspire an audience and lead an organization. Whether you need to win over a colleague, a team, an executive, a recruiter, or an entire conference audience, effective storytelling is key.

Briggs also listed this as the first recommendation for CSOs in the report:

“Build a culture that values and rewards partnership. Introduce behavioral objectives that measure partnership working within the function and across the business.”