Ryan Woodley is CEO of Netcraft.gettyWhile some businesses and security teams have been slow to integrate AI, criminals have adopted AI with unprecedented speed. They’re leveraging rapidly advancing capabilities to deliver high-quality, personalized scams at a staggering scale. So, it’s essential that security teams find the right solutions quickly and answer the question: Is it hype, or does it hit?Unfortunately, hype is part of the industry, as a quick walk around the RSAC 2026 cybersecurity conference revealed. Hype tactics may capture immediate attention, but they can undermine long-term credibility. Over time, exaggerated claims erode trust among security leaders and create confusion about which solutions deliver meaningful value. Distinguishing substantive capabilities from marketing noise becomes harder​.How can companies create a meaningful security strategy that isn’t merely a collection of over-hyped solutions with limited strategy behind them? Security leaders must learn to determine what truly reduces risk in a meaningful way, without requiring an overly complex security stack.Evaluate Security Solutions By Outcomes, Not Specs​Marketing-heavy language or technical jargon makes it difficult for buyers to evaluate offerings. Fear, uncertainty and doubt create urgency, but they can lead businesses to buy too many tools without a deeper understanding of how they'll work together or how to use them correctly. That may lead to inefficiencies or expose the organization to unnecessary operational risk.Security leaders must look at the bigger picture when evaluating potential solutions and ask themselves, “What outcomes will this purchase help us drive?”If those outcomes can’t be easily and clearly expressed or understood, that’s a real problem. You want to look for authentic solutions that speak to the actual challenge you’re looking to address and solve.​Four Pillars Of A Coherent Security Strategy​As I meet with security leaders, four themes commonly come up. They matter both when choosing solutions and building alignment with your team members and leadership.1. Build a security culture, not a compliance program.Security awareness fails when it's treated as a compliance exercise rather than a leadership responsibility. It’s not whether employees completed the training module, but whether they understand why the threat affects them and the organization. Even obvious scams keep working because people encounter them when they're new, distracted or under pressure.What changed our approach was moving from annual checkbox training to continuous, contextual education: lunch-and-learns where threat analysts walk through live attack patterns, AMAs where employees can ask questions they were afraid to ask in formal sessions and phishing kit walk-throughs that connect the mechanics of an attack to real customer and business impact. We find that a bit of personality helps—we have hidden, small recurring Easter eggs in training materials to make lessons stick.The goal isn’t to produce a team of threat analysts. It's to make the right decision easier in the moment and make employees feel like active participants in the organization’s security posture rather than the weakest link.2. Evaluate vendors on outcomes, not impressiveness.A vendor can show you an impressive dashboard, cite impressive detection rates and describe impressive architecture, but none of it tells you if your real risk goes down. When evaluating any solution, I start by asking, “What specific outcome does this produce, and how would I measure it?” If that triggers a long explanation of how the technology works rather than a clear answer about what it changes, that's a signal.I recently worked with a fintech leader whose team was losing ground to account takeovers. The downstream problem was fraud, but the upstream lever was the earlier disruption of phishing infrastructure. Once we reframed the evaluation around attack availability and takedown speed rather than detection coverage, the picture became much clearer and the results followed. Account takeovers dropped by 90%.Ask vendors for reference customers willing to speak candidly. Ask what failure looks like, not just success. The technology that holds up under those questions is worth your attention.3. Deploy layered defense, not silver bullets.No single control is sufficient. A security strategy built around any single vendor’s promises leaves a gap. Attackers move toward whatever channel, platform or process offers the best return, and they'll find the one left uncovered.My organization isn’t exempt. Even as we work to disrupt attacks for others, we face sustained DDoS campaigns, executive impersonation attempts and ongoing efforts to probe for vulnerabilities. The lesson is that layered defense must follow the attacker’s economics, not vendor marketing. Detection, intelligence sharing, takedowns, reporting and response must work together. The connections between those functions matter as much as the functions themselves.4. Choose collaboration that produces intelligence.Defenders have one structural advantage criminals can't replicate: We can organize openly around a shared purpose. I was reminded of this recently at a working group focused on the next generation of digital risk protection, which included leaders from infrastructure providers, major banks, regional credit unions, retail and more. People compared what they were seeing across sectors, challenged each other’s assumptions and left with practical, actionable intelligence.This is what makes a collaboration worth investing in: genuine information reciprocity, representation across sectors so you aren't just falling into an industry echo chamber and a shared commitment to operational output rather than relationship maintenance. The most useful intelligence I've encountered has almost always come through these kinds of deliberate peer exchanges, in rooms where people trusted each other enough to say what they were seeing.From Hype To Secure Strategy​Security leaders are navigating an overwhelming amount of noise to determine what solutions can truly deliver. As you build a security stack around your organization’s unique needs, it’s important not to get distracted by the latest shiny object or buzzword. When evaluating providers, clarity, authenticity and outcome-focused execution are what build lasting trust.​Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?