4 min read · Written by Grant Rayner on 18 Oct 2023
Share by emailFor the past few weeks, I’ve been focused on different services. I’ve discussed the advantages and disadvantages of consulting services, retained services, training services, and response services. In this week’s article, I’ll focus on security analysis.
Security analysis can be both a service and a product, so we’ll focus on both aspects.
As an independent security professional, there’s definitely a viable opportunity for you to focus on security analysis services if that’s your chosen speciality. Alternatively, you could integrate security analysis with other offerings, such as consulting services.
In this article, I’ll focus on delivery approaches, and will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of delivering analysis as a service or as a product.
There are two approaches you could consider when delivering analysis:
Let’s explore analysis as a service.
If you were to offer analysis as a service, you would be offering your services to corporate clients on a per project basis. The client would provide a brief or terms of reference. You would then conduct research and write a report for your client.
From a business standpoint, providing analysis as a service is effectively the same as consulting. You would spend time doing something for a client and they would pay you for that time.
When it comes to pricing analysis services, you have two options. You could price this service based on the time it took you to research and write the report. Alternatively, you could apply value pricing by trying to charge what you think the analysis is worth to your clients.
The challenge with offering analysis as a service is that most organisations are already well served with analysis. Many large companies have their own in-house analytical teams. They also subscribe to the services of security companies that provide analytical reports. A significant amount of good analysis on different situations and themes is also available for free via the media, think tanks and independent specialists. In such an environment, you will need to be very confident that you’ll be able to produce unique insights that have tangible value to your clients. In such a scenario, the more specialised you are, the better as it will provide a point of differentiation.
Now, let’s explore analysis as a product.
The alternative to offering analysis as a service is to offer analysis as a product. In this approach, you would produce analytical reports and then sell these reports to customers.
This approach flips the services model described above, in the sense that instead of providing tailored analysis for a specific client, you’re building a product with the intent to sell it to multiple clients.
For example, you could offer situational reports when specific events occur. These reports could explain what happened, what it means to your clients, and what they should do in response.
You could also offer thematic reports on specific issues. Topical issues right now would be the implications of armed conflict between China and Taiwan or the situation in Israel.
An effective approach with which multiple people have found success is to focus on a specific country. You could write weekly reports on current developments in the country, write situation reports if key events happen, and write thematic reports on key issues.
The challenge here is whether clients would be willing to pay for such reports given the amount of information already publicly available. You’ll have to carefully consider what makes your products sufficiently unique that your clients will be willing to pay.
Another factor to consider is the amount of time it takes to prepare such reports. Would you be able to successfully recoup the internal cost of producing your reports in terms of sales revenue?
One last point to be aware of is that analysis can be a 24/7 job. You’ll need to be fully on top of whatever situations you are tracking. There’s also a lot of research and reading involved, which you’re not going to get paid for.
If you’ve decided to specialise as an independent analyst, you shouldn’t feel constrained to only writing analytical reports. Here’s a few other ways you can build out your offerings with complementary services that will increase your revenue and growth potential.
Writing articles is an excellent way to demonstrate your experience and insights as an analyst.
A library of articles provides a verifiable demonstration of your capabilities that you can reference in your proposals. If your articles offer value, you can consider offering your articles on a subscription platform, such as Substack. This approach will provide an ongoing revenue stream that will grow over time. A point to be aware of here is that we’re near saturation point with article subscriptions. To be successful, you’ll need to be an excellent writer that focuses on highly relevant issues. If you choose to specialise, you may get subscribers but you can expect a smaller overall number of subscribers due to the specialised nature of your content.
In addition to your written reports, you could provide briefings to clients on specific topics. Following the approaches described above, these briefings could either be centrally developed and available to any client for a fee, or you could develop tailored briefings at the request of a specific client.
Lastly, you could provide training in analytical techniques. If you’re well established in the field and have developed your own methodologies, you could teach these methodologies to people who are willing to pay to learn them. As discussed in the earlier articles on training services, you could offer this training to individuals or organisations.
Offering training in specific analytical techniques will help to build your credibility as an expert in your field, and is something you should seriously consider incorporating into your products and services.
There’s a significant opportunity to leverage generative AI to improve your capability to deliver high quality analytical products and services. One simple example would be to use AI to summarise articles and extract key points. As an independent security professional, generative AI has the potential to increase your productivity and make you significantly more effective. It’s something worth exploring.
In summary, if you’re an experienced analyst, it’s possible to establish yourself as an independent professional in the field. However, it’s important that you’re clear eyed regarding the various challenges you’ll face. To get around challenges relating to growth, the best approach is to carefully integrate both products and services into your business. Also consider training services, as well as articles and briefings. Finally, analysis is a field where you can leverage generative AI to your advantage.