There is a basic truth of information security jobs that can be intensely frustrating to some people but represent an exciting challenge to others: your guidance on improving security and reducing risk will often be ignored.
Many security professionals have a difficult time with the feeling of being ineffective. You can spend considerable time on a project that includes recommendations on improving security, and many of those recommendations might be disregarded. A track record of such events can make most professionals feel like a failure.
A security professional needs to understand that they are a change agent. Because information security practices are often not intuitive to others, your job will often involve working with others so that they will embrace small or large changes and do their part in improving security in the organization. To be an effective change agent, you need the skills of negotiation and persuading others to understand and embrace your point of view and why it’s important to the organization.
You need to realize, however, that even if you are a skilled negotiator, you still won’t get your way sometimes. This should not be considered a failure, and here’s why: it’s our job to make sure that decision makers make informed decisions, considering a variety of factors including security issues. As long as decision makers make informed decisions (meaning, we have informed them of the risks associated with their choices), we have done our job, and we need to be comfortable knowing that sometimes decisions are made that we don’t agree with.
– Excerpt from Getting An Information Security Job For Dummies, to be published in 2015
Peter H. Gregory 