Explain What the Business Stands to Lose

Jeffrey Wheatman had a security problem to explain and little money to solve it. In his Fireside Chat conversation, he recalled running network and security operations at Martha Stewart Living and trying to establish why protecting digital assets mattered.

The conversation changed when he connected security to something his colleagues already valued: the company's images. He asked what would happen if someone took those images and used them in another magazine. In his account, that possibility brought the business consequence into focus.

He did not need the audience to become security specialists before they could care. He needed to make the relationship between the files and the business visible.

Begin with the value people recognize

Wheatman described this as an early lesson in communicating business impact. Talking about files, technical threats and hackers would have left more translation work with the audience. Starting with valuable creative work gave everyone a shared point of reference.

The story is specific to a publishing environment, but the communication problem is familiar across industries. A security team can understand a threat in detail while the people making decisions remain unclear about its consequences.

An editorial application is to begin a proposal with the work or asset that matters to the audience. Then explain how the security concern could affect it and what decision is needed. Technical detail still has a place; the business purpose gives that detail a reason to be there.

Wheatman's experience does not establish a universal formula for winning a budget. It shows a useful change in the conversation: protecting information became connected to protecting something the organization already understood was valuable.

Listen to the original conversation with Jeffrey Wheatman · Read the transcript

From the Fireside Chat archive: original episode published 2024-01-17. This is an editorial reflection on that conversation, not a new interview or an update on the guest’s current role.