Force Multiplying Security: A Playbook
Feb 2025. Updated Sept 2025.
A few days ago I was catching up with two friends, a former US Army Green Beret and an IDF recon soldier in reserve, and we talked about small teams and what makes them effective. The conversation moved fast from tactics to practical tradecraft, and after they critiqued some of my past notes, we sketched a short playbook for small security teams that need outsized results with limited resources.
The core idea is simple: use what you already have, partner with the right teams, and apply automation and technology where it actually multiplies force.
Tools, skills, and partnerships you already maintain are the easiest and fastest paths to impact, so look for things that can be repurposed, combined, or re-prioritized to deliver immediate value. Security that lives in a silo is fragile, while deep cross-functional relationships unlock visibility, reduce friction, and turn one team's defense into the organization's posture.
Automating the mundane removes repetitive work so people can focus on unique, high-leverage problems; use data to guide decisions, keep automation simple, and make sure it scales without adding maintenance debt. Improvement should be continuous, built from learning from success and failure, running red-team exercises, instrumenting outcomes, and closing feedback loops, since small iterations compound quickly when the learning behind them is real.
Decentralized leadership and initiative create resilience. Giving people space to experiment, fail fast, and own outcomes is what turns a small squad into a force multiplier. None of this works if it stays disconnected from the business, though, so security has to be measured in language leadership understands and tied to outcomes they care about, communicated without unnecessary noise.
Force multiplication means doing the right things with what you already have, smarter and together. This playbook is a flexible framework to help small teams become more efficient, more proactive, and more impactful.