Editor’s note: The following is a sponsored blog post from QA.
The security professionals of tomorrow needs a different kind of skillset. Not just deeper technical knowledge, but sharper judgement, situational awareness, and the confidence to work alongside AI rather than just seeing it as a tool.
By 2027, cybersecurity will be defined by an uncomfortable truth: AI will sit on both sides of the battlefield. It will accelerate attacks, automate exploitation and scale adversarial behavior. At the same time, it will become indispensable to defenders (see my blog on the Rise of the Agentic Defender). The professionals who succeed will be those who understand how to operate in that tension, and veterans are uniquely positioned to do exactly that.
For service leavers and veterans moving from service into cybersecurity, the field doesn’t feel so unfamiliar. It looks a lot like operating in contested environments, managing uncertainty and making decisions where the cost of failure is real. As a former veteran, I recognize that the technology may have changed, but the fundamentals have not.
AI Security Management
One of the new realities security teams are confronting is the explosion of AI: Models, datasets, APIs, agentic services, and soon Physical AI, alongside third-party components being pulled into systems faster than most organizations can track them. This isn’t just a technical problem. AI governance and supply chain risks are critical issues. Veterans who have worked in specialist roles, or logistics, support services, and operational planning instinctively know that unknown dependencies are liabilities. If you don’t know what’s in your AI stack, who trained it, or how it can fail, you don’t understand your risk profile. Management and auditing AI in 2026 will feel less like governance work and more like reconnaissance, identifying hidden dependencies, weak points, and assumptions before they’re exploited.
Security Operations
Attackers are starting to use agentic AI to act with limited autonomy (as confidence grows, we will see more autonomous attackers, perhaps even by accident), adapting to environments and able to mimic human behavior. Defending against this means adapting legacy detection models and embracing AI-enabled detection engineering, and defenders that can hunt, analyze, respond and recover without waiting for human instruction. Veterans with intelligence, signals or technical trade backgrounds recognize this immediately. Delegating authority to autonomous systems while retaining human oversight mirrors modern command-and-control models. We trust automation, but you never abdicate responsibility.
This is why so many veterans transition naturally into security operations, detection engineering and threat intelligence roles. Modern SOCs are no longer ticket factories, as AI automation removes the traditional entry layers. They’re intelligence-led environments where speed, prioritization and decision-making under pressure matter more than volume. Veterans thrive because they are accustomed to operating with incomplete information, escalating appropriately and coordinating response across teams. Whether as senior analysts, SOC leads, or incident responders, they bring calm, structure and accountability when incidents unfold. Reading fragmented signals, filtering noise, assessing intent and acting decisively are already familiar skills. Don’t be put off by the tech tooling – it may be different in the military, but the discipline of analysis remains the same.
Security Risk & Assurance
Regulation is another area where veterans bring an advantage that is often underestimated, as legislation, standards and frameworks evolve rapidly, and many organizations struggle to keep up. Veterans understand how to operate and collaborate within constraints. Translating regulatory intent, utilizing practical controls, mirrors working within rules of engagement, making veterans invaluable in security risk and assurance roles, where interpretation and judgment matter more than box-ticking.
Resilience is being redefined. Systems must not only be secure but also capable of failing gracefully and recovering quickly. Security assurance in 2026 means understanding digital risk across the entire value chain, from suppliers to service delivery, and embedding resilience in ways that are measurable and aligned with business priorities. Veterans naturally think in terms of continuity, contingency and mission assurance. This skillset positions them perfectly for cyber resilience, third-party risk management and security project program roles, ensuring that operations continue under pressure.
Cyber Threat & Security Testing
As AI becomes embedded in critical decision-making, safety and security becomes non-negotiable. Security teams can no longer afford to trust systems they haven’t broken themselves. By 2027, red-teaming AI models will be as normal as penetration testing is today. Veterans are comfortable with a safety and security first mindset, when controlled failure is better than any operational surprise. Those with engineering, technical or safety-critical backgrounds often excel here, moving into security testing and offensive roles where precision and skepticism are strengths, not obstacles.
Identity attacks are no longer limited to stolen passwords. Synthetic identities, AI-generated personas and agentic behavior allow attackers to blend in and persist undetected. We now need to spot what isn’t human, also giving rise to a new level of insider threat vulnerability. Veterans are trained to notice behavioral inconsistencies, situational awareness and subtle anomalies. This makes them well-suited to threat engineering roles that combine behavioral analytics with risk judgment.
Security Engineering
Secure-by-design thinking will separate mature organizations from reactive ones. This means hardening development pipelines, validating every component and protecting the build process itself from compromise. Veterans understand preparation as survival; you don’t wait for contact to think about defense. Those with engineering or operational planning backgrounds often thrive in security architecture and DevSecOps roles, where proactive decisions shape long-term outcomes. With an ability to communicate up and down the command chain and work collaboratively, veterans have a vital skillset to break down silos to achieve trusted business outcomes.
Incident Response
By 2027, human AI integration in the world of cybersecurity will be considered normal. Security operations will rely on AI agents acting in parallel with human analysts, responding at machine speed while humans provide intent and judgment. The differentiator will be how well teams communicate during incidents and times of crisis. Veterans are trained to maintain clarity under pressure, coordinate action and lead decisively when seconds matter. This requires curiosity, foresight and the habit of asking “what if?” before attackers do. Veterans bring systems thinking and leadership credibility that allow security to be understood, communicated and supported at the business level. These traits translate directly into incident response leadership and crisis management roles.
Your Next Steps
Over the next year, we will see AI become both a formidable adversary and the most capable of adjacent defenders, made worse by constant geopolitical shocks. As AI accelerates analysis and decision-making, critical thinking becomes more important, not less. Automated systems can produce answers quickly, but they can also amplify errors and misinformation.
In 2026, the cybersecurity skills that matter most are not purely technical, as I’ve described. They are rooted in judgment, discipline, adaptability and resilience. Veterans are trained to question assumptions, validate intelligence and seek corroboration before acting. Your critical thinking skillset will become the most valued of security traits for any cybersecurity role.
