Earning a Seat at the Table: Using Intelligence Standards to Elevate Physical Security and Influence Executive Decisions
This article draws on a presentation by Dr. Angela “Angie” Lewis, whose career spans more than two decades in intelligence—from the CIA to security and intelligence roles at The Walt Disney Company, Salesforce, and Creative Artists Agency. As both a practitioner and an adjunct professor, she brings a valuable perspective on connecting analytical ideas with real-world decisions.
Security professionals often talk about earning a seat at the executive table. We want security involved earlier, given more influence, and included in important business decisions.
But executives may be asking a different question: Why should security be at this table?
The answer isn't just that something bad might happen. Risk is always present. A stronger answer is that decisions improve when leaders can use disciplined security intelligence to understand what is happening, what may happen next, and what choices are available.
At GSX 2026, Angie Lewis explored how intelligence standards can help security professionals provide that kind of decision support. Her central point was clear: standards are not the destination. They create consistent, transparent practices that make intelligence more relevant, rigorous, and trustworthy.
Standards create a foundation for trust.
Intelligence rarely offers certainty. It works with incomplete information, competing priorities, limited time, and an uncertain future. Credibility, then, cannot depend on sounding completely sure.
Consider two assessments:
- "There is no threat. You are good to go."
- "Based on the information available, the likelihood of significant disruption appears low. We have limited visibility into one group and are monitoring two indicators that could change the assessment."
The second assessment is more useful because it explains both the judgment and its limits. It gives decision makers a basis for understanding what is known, what remains uncertain, and what might prompt a change.
Standards help make this kind of work consistent. They establish shared expectations for how intelligence is developed and communicated. They do not prescribe every organization's procedures or eliminate uncertainty. They give stakeholders a professional baseline for what they can expect from an intelligence capability.
That baseline matters because leaders need a reason to believe an assessment rests on disciplined analysis—not simply an individual analyst's instincts.
Intelligence starts with the decision.
Organizations have more information than ever: threat feeds, news, social media, travel alerts, incident reports, vendor platforms, dashboards, and AI summaries. The challenge is deciding what deserves attention.
An intelligence function can monitor hundreds of posts and report a sharp increase in negative online discussion. But the executive question may be much more specific: Should we proceed with the acquisition announcement on Thursday, and if so, under what conditions?
That question changes what information matters. The team may need to assess protest plans, potential operational disruption, executive exposure, employee concerns, media attention, and whether online activity could spill into the physical environment. Just as important, the team needs to know what developments would actually change the decision.
This is the difference between collecting information about a topic and producing intelligence that supports a decision. Requirements-driven intelligence gives leaders relevant findings rather than making them work out why a report matters.
A shared picture connects security functions.
Lewis illustrated this with a fictional company, Project Meridian. Meridian is preparing to announce an acquisition and host a town hall with its CEO. Before the announcement, online discussion reveals that activist groups may organize a demonstration. A former employee also posts hostile comments about company leadership.
That situation touches several areas: the GSOC, executive protection, workplace violence prevention, physical security, communications, HR, legal, and corporate strategy.
Each group brings its own expertise. Intelligence standards do not replace those functions or take ownership of their decisions. They provide an analytical connective layer: a common way to identify information, assess it, communicate uncertainty, and build a coherent picture across teams.
Coordination alone is not intelligence. Several teams can share updates and work hard while still lacking clear answers to the questions leaders need answered: What is happening? What matters? What could happen next? What does it mean for the organization?
A shared analytical framework helps turn disconnected updates into decision support.
Four practices make intelligence more useful.
Lewis highlighted four ways standards help intelligence functions work consistently:
- Requirements create relevance. Understand the decision being made and what information could materially affect it.
- Structured analysis creates rigor. Separate evidence from inference, consider alternative explanations, and challenge conclusions that feel obvious.
- Indicators and explicit uncertainty support calibration. Explain how confident the assessment is, what remains unknown, and what would change the judgment.
- A common framework makes integration possible. Bring information from different teams together into a coherent view.
These practices also make assessments more defensible. Defensibility does not mean predicting the future perfectly. It means that decision makers can understand the reasoning: what the team assesses, what evidence matters, where the gaps are, and what developments would prompt a reassessment.
That distinction matters because decision quality and outcome quality are not the same. A disciplined decision can still lead to a bad outcome, and a poor decision can get lucky. Standards help organizations evaluate reasoning quality based on what was knowable at the time.
Make uncertainty actionable
As the Meridian scenario develops, new information changes different parts of the picture. A protest is publicly announced. A journalist asks about layoffs. The former employee posts again. Later, an analyst finds evidence that he may be traveling toward the event location.
Each development may affect a different decision. Executive protection might adjust the CEO's movements. Threat management may change its assessment. The event owner may reconsider the town hall format. Communications may need to review the announcement strategy.
A single "high risk" label cannot make those decisions. Leaders need to know what changed, how strong the evidence is, and what action the new information supports.
Indicators and decision thresholds help here. The team might identify specific developments that would trigger increased monitoring, a change in protective posture, or a fresh threat assessment. Different decisions can have different thresholds because their consequences are different.
The intelligence function does not make every decision. It helps the appropriate decision makers understand the environment and the trade-offs—including the costs of acting, the costs of waiting, and what the organization may give up with each choice.
Move intelligence up and out
Security intelligence can add value by connecting an alert to its broader business implications. A planned protest may be manageable from a physical security perspective, while still affecting employee communications, the acquisition announcement, media coverage, or the company's reputation.
That means intelligence needs to move up to explain how security information relates to business decisions, and out to reach other decision makers who can use it.
This does not mean security takes over communications, HR, legal, or strategy. It means recognizing when a security insight has value beyond the security function and sharing it with the people responsible for those decisions.
The result is a shared understanding of the environment. Each leader can make decisions within their area of responsibility using the same evidence and assessment.
Five questions to bring to the next decision
The presentation closed with five practical questions for anyone supporting decisions under uncertainty:
- What decision are we actually supporting?
- What information would materially change that decision?
- What do we know, and what are we inferring?
- What would cause us to recommend a different action?
- Who else could use this judgment?
These questions help teams focus their analysis, communicate limits clearly, and look beyond their organizational boundaries.
Build the judgment leaders rely on
Earning a seat at the table isn't simply about attending more meetings or sending more reports. The goal is to provide judgment that leaders want before they make important decisions.
When standards support consistent, relevant, and transparent analysis, trust can grow over time. Leaders involve intelligence earlier. Earlier involvement provides better context. Better context leads to stronger requirements and more useful intelligence.
The clearest sign of an effective intelligence function may not be that executives read every report. It may be that they seek its judgment before deciding—and that the assessment helps them understand when action is warranted, when conditions should change, or when proceeding is reasonable.
That is how intelligence standards can help physical security move from reporting activity to influencing decisions. That's how security earns its seat at the table.