Security teams face burnout and blind spots when leadership over-rotates on tools and automation while underinvesting in trust, culture, and human judgment.
Connie McIntosh, Head of Security at Ericsson, focuses on psychological safety, leadership presence, and responsible AI use to strengthen resilience.
She encourages building security around people by encouraging early disclosure, making training engaging, using AI with guardrails, and preparing now for long-term risks like quantum threats.
Building a resilient security organization has less to do with control systems than with the people who operate them. In this model, outcomes follow culture. Teams are designed to perform under pressure, stay engaged over time, and speak up when it matters most. External recognition has its place, but the most durable measure of success is internal, rooted in trust, psychological safety, and the confidence of the workforce itself.
That belief underpins the leadership of Connie McIntosh, Head of Security at Ericsson and a 2025 Global Recognition Award winner with a career spanning cybersecurity, mobile network technologies, and artificial intelligence. Yet despite deep technical credentials, McIntosh says that the industry’s fixation on tools, controls, and automation often misses the decisive factor: human leadership and the systems that enable people to do their best work.
"The difference between a manager and a leader is humanity. A manager manages tasks and gets things done, but a leader thinks about the wider picture, especially people. When you genuinely care about people, give them feedback, and take an interest in them, they want to do good work, and much of the rest takes care of itself," says McIntosh.
Her philosophy is a strategic response to the psychological realities of cybersecurity. In a profession defined by stress and burnout, McIntosh’s emphasis on humanness becomes a competitive advantage for retaining top talent. By deliberately celebrating wins and investing in her team as a core business strategy, she drives measurable gains in loyalty and performance.
A praise-free profession: Security is a profession where success is often invisible and recognition is rare. Wins tend to be silent, while failures are highly visible, making sustained morale difficult in even the strongest teams. McIntosh is intentional about countering that dynamic by creating space to acknowledge progress and resilience, especially after hard-won victories. "We make a real conscious effort as a team to celebrate our wins, especially when we’ve overcome difficult challenges," she notes.
The ROI of caring: McIntosh views investing in people as a measurable business return. By supporting growth beyond immediate job requirements, she builds trust and commitment that directly reduces attrition and strengthens long-term performance. "If you look after your people, they give back to you ten times. The result is, I have such little turnover."
This human-centric approach scales across the enterprise, aligning with a broader ethos that balances intense work with a fun, engaging environment. The culture rests on a safe technical sandbox, where clear guardrails create the security necessary for trust. Employees complete required training before gaining access to internal agentic AI tools, ensuring capability and accountability from the outset. Built on this foundation, the organization can foster a genuine speak-up culture that empowers employees and helps close the cybersecurity skills gap.
No-blame reporting: McIntosh treats psychological safety as a prerequisite for strong security outcomes, removing fear so issues surface early and can be addressed fast. "It’s better to know sooner so teams can be proactive in cleaning it up, rather than hiding mistakes because of blame," she says. The same logic drives her approach to security training, which prioritizes engagement over box-checking. "With AI, there’s no reason training has to be boring. You can create high-quality, narrative-driven content cheaply, if not for free, and people actually pay attention."
The talent of tomorrow: She offers a counterintuitive warning for 2026. While AI is often positioned as a solution to near-term talent shortages, she argues it may actually deepen the long-term skills gap. As automation absorbs entry-level work, organizations risk breaking the career pathways that develop future leaders, turning today’s efficiency gains into tomorrow’s talent crisis. "If AI automates the junior roles, we destroy the career trajectory needed to create experienced leaders," she says.
She frames the next phase of cybersecurity leadership around judgment, not just technology. AI adoption, in her view, is inevitable, but its value depends on disciplined deployment that protects intellectual property while elevating human work rather than replacing it. At the same time, quantum risk moves from abstract future threat to present-day planning problem, forcing security leaders to think years ahead while navigating an acute talent shortage. The throughline is experience: expertise takes time to build, and automation that erodes early career pathways risks weakening the profession just as demands intensify.
For leaders, McIntosh is direct about what that shift requires. "You hire smart people so you should free them up to do intelligent, strategic, higher-order work," she says, arguing that AI should amplify human judgment, not sideline it. She also warns that waiting on quantum readiness is a mistake, noting that "the 'harvest now, decrypt later' threat is happening right now." And for CISOs themselves, the mandate is personal as much as professional. "You cannot sit above the technology anymore. You have to immerse yourself, understand it, and future-proof your own career," she concludes.
