Pixel mosaic in pale aurora blues, violets and creams fading to deep blue
A 90-day personal brand guide
Building Your Personal Brand
A plan for security leaders that fits in one time block a week.
Miscreants // AuthorityOps
WHOAMI
Sean Sun
CEO and founder, Miscreants
We've built 100+ brands in cybersecurity
Coaching cybersecurity creators on growing their brand
Coaching, ghostwriting & branding for busy CISOs
Building Your Personal Brand
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why care at all
Why build a personal brand?
Visibility
67%
Forrester
of companies hired their CISO from outside
Get quoted by the press
Land podcast guest spots
Own a topic in your corner of security
Influence
78%
NACD
of public-company CISOs brief the board quarterly
Get invited to speak
Get asked to advise startups
Get considered for board seats
Career and business
52%
ISACA
say keeping cyber talent is getting harder
Hear about roles before they’re posted
Attract senior talent to your team
Warm up buyers before the first call
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Is this you?
I get it. Posting online can feel like a second job!
“I want to post, but I don’t know how.”
“I don’t have time to post online.”
“I’ll let my work speak for itself.”
“I don’t want to look self-promotional.”
“I have nothing interesting to say.”
“What if I say something wrong in public?”
Spoiler: it doesn't have to be
the bar is on the floor
It’s easier than you think.
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An incredibly low number of security-leader-turned-creators.
LinkedIn is a quality content starved platform.
Content creation is a positive-sum game.
The basics
Ok, what even is a personal brand?
It’s what people think of when they hear your name. It’s made of six things.
Mind map: your personal brand in the center, branching out to six parts
Your personal brand
What you’re known for
Your 2–3 topics and a clear point of view
How you sound
Your opinions, in the voice you use in the room
Who knows it
Peers, future hires, boards, and customers
What you share
Lessons and real decisions, never the incident
Where it shows up
Your headline, posts, comments, DMs, and stages
How consistently
Every week, in the same lane
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MENTAL MODELS AROUND CREATING
Building a brand from scratch requires content creation
ADOPT THIS MENTAL MODEL
Content creation is unlearning shame.
TRUST THE ALGO
If it’s bad, most people won’t even see it.
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Screenshot of the "Start a post" box, with Video, Photo and Write article options
MENTAL MODELS AROUND CREATING
It's called social media, not spam-the-feed-with-ai-slop-media
Reply. Comment. Reach out.
This matters
Screenshot of a blank "New message" window for a direct message
But so do these!!
Screenshot of an "Add a comment" box for replying to a post
Messages
Replies
Who doesn't love a quadrant
Things to write about
Takes a stand
Tells the story
← What happened
What’s next →
Hot Takes
You’re the one who says the framework is wrong: the opinion others won’t say out loud.
Emerging Trends
You’re already tracking the next threat or trend. Write about what’s coming
Battle Scars
You’ve lived through the incident, and you write what it taught you.
Build-in-public
You’re standing up a team, a program, or a new function, and sharing the process as it happens.
Grounded Explanations
You turn noise into signal and jargon into plain language. Write about what something means, and why it matters.
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Unmistakably you
Finding your lane
Find it
What you know deeply
The problems you’ve actually solved
+ Where you’ve done it
Your industry, company size, or stage
+ What you believe
The opinion you’d defend in a room of peers
= Your lane
The topic your name comes up with
Hold it
Example
Rarely, out of lane: every breach headline, hot takes outside security
Sometimes, adjacent: vendor contracts, reporting supplier risk to the board
Mostly, your lane
Third-party risk in healthcare
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Unmistakably you
Expressing your brand
Forgettable
“CISO at [Company]”
Good
“Protecting healthcare from cyber threats | CISO”
If you’re creating for…
Your headline might read
Peers
They want your honest take
Healthcare CISO | What third-party risk looks like in practice
Future hires
They want to know what working for you is like
Building a healthcare security team people want to join | CISO
Customers
They want to trust your program
Keeping patient data safe across every vendor we work with | CISO
Boards and recruiters
They want a business leader
Healthcare CISO | Turning third-party risk into board-level decisions
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Content strategy
A layered content ecosystem
Layer · purpose
What to post
1. Discovery
Awareness
Contrarian opinions, your take on breach news, comments on bigger voices’ posts
2. Bonding
Attachment
Personal posts: how you got into security, conference check-ins, replies in your comments
3. Authority
Legitimacy
Lessons from real decisions, how you report to the board, jargon translated
4. Cadence
Deepen connection
A named series: “What I’d tell my board,” a weekly one-line breach lesson
5. Opportunity
The payoff
Hires, speaking invitations, advisory seats, customer trust, your next role
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Here’s what that might look like
Plan and generate in one day for a full month of posts
Week
Post type
Topic
Example
1
Opinion
Incident readiness
Most tabletop exercises test the plan, not the people.
2
Lesson
Third-party risk
Most of our near misses start with third-party access.
3
Translation
Board reporting
“Are we a target?” answered in plain language
4
News + your take
Third-party risk
A new supplier-risk report, and what you’d do differently
5
Opinion
Board reporting
Your board doesn’t need more metrics; it needs better ones
6
Lesson
Incident readiness
We bought the tool before we fixed the process
7
Personal
—
Why or how you got into security
8
Opinion
Third-party risk
Security questionnaires measure paperwork, not risk
9
Translation
Incident readiness
The first hour of an incident, explained as if for your CFO
10
News + your take
Board reporting
A new disclosure rule and what it changes for your reporting
11
Opinion
Incident readiness
If your response plan is a 40-page binder, nobody will use it.
12
Lesson
Board reporting
The board update meeting that went awry, and what you changed
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NOW DO IT
Your challenge: post that you’re here.
Your post
“I’m at the Lytical Annual CISO summit today."

  • Here’s one thing I learned already
  • Here's one thing I want to take home
  • Look who I met!
Add a photo, tag Lytical, and post it!
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Go forth and prosper
Or if you have questions, that's ok too!
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