Technical skills get most of the attention in cyber security. You are encouraged to learn how to analyse logs, break down alerts, and understand suspicious behaviour. But the part many beginners underestimate is the ability to explain what they found. As soon as you join a SOC or an incident response team, you discover that a large part of the job is not just investigation. It is communication.
Security teams rely on clear explanations to prioritise work, avoid confusion, and prevent mistakes. Managers need fast, accurate summaries. Engineers need actionable details. Stakeholders need to understand risk. Your ability to communicate findings becomes as important as the findings themselves.
This is why communication is one of the most valuable soft skills an analyst can develop. It is also one of the most teachable.
Why Clear Communication Matters More Than People Realise
In a real SOC environment, information flows quickly. Alerts arrive constantly. Multiple analysts may be working on related activity at the same time. If your explanations are unclear, incomplete, or overly technical, it slows everything down. Teams can misread priorities or duplicate work. Engineers can patch the wrong asset or miss the root cause entirely.
Most beginners assume that strong technical ability will compensate for unclear communication. It rarely does. Even accurate findings can be overlooked if they are buried in jargon or presented without context. A good explanation, on the other hand, helps everyone understand impact, urgency, and next steps.
Clarity does not mean oversimplifying. It means making it easy for someone else to understand your reasoning and act on it.
What Makes a Security Explanation Effective
Clear explanations share a few important qualities. They start with what matters. They surface the essential details without overwhelming the reader. They connect evidence to interpretation so that the conclusions make sense. They explain risk and impact in a grounded, accurate way. And they remain calm and structured even when an incident is developing quickly.
A strong explanation feels like a guided walkthrough of your thinking. It does not depend on specialist vocabulary. Instead, it shows why something stood out to you, what you considered, what you ruled out, and why your conclusion makes sense. Interviewers and SOC leads look for this style of reasoning because it shows that you understand not only what you observed but also what it means.
Where Beginners Struggle When Explaining Findings
It is common for beginners to focus heavily on describing what they saw on screen. They may list log entries, paste tool output, or repeat alert text without explaining why it is significant. Others jump straight to conclusions without showing the steps that led there. Some write long explanations full of jargon because they believe it sounds more professional.
These habits usually develop because early learners practise analysis but not explanation. They understand what they are doing internally but have not yet built the skill of making their thinking visible to others. The good news is that this is easy to fix once you begin practising deliberately.
How Practical Training Helps You Develop This Skill
The simplest way to improve your explanations is to put yourself in environments where you need to interpret evidence and express your reasoning clearly. When you work through realistic investigations, you learn how to slow down, form hypotheses, and describe what the data shows.
TryHackMe’s SOC Level 1 pathway is designed around these real-world skills.
As you analyse logs, explore alerts, and investigate suspicious activity, you practise connecting observations to meaning. You learn how to decide which details matter and how to communicate uncertainty in a professional way. Over time, you become more confident at describing your thought process because you have seen similar patterns before and have learned how to articulate them.
Practical challenges also help you find your natural communication style. Some analysts prefer short notes. Others write structured summaries. Some speak through their reasoning aloud. There is no single correct approach. The goal is to be clear, accurate, and consistent.
A Simple Approach You Can Use to Explain Any Finding
A useful starting point is to follow a three-part structure. First, describe what you observed. Keep it factual and focused. Then explain what that observation suggests. Connect the behaviour to a likely cause or risk. Finally, state what should happen next. This could be further investigation, escalation, containment, or simply monitoring.
This approach works whether you are in an interview, a training lab, or an actual SOC shift. It helps you stay coherent even if you are unsure about every detail. It also gives your audience a clear sense of your reasoning, which is often more important than the final answer.
Final Thoughts
Clear communication is what turns technical analysis into meaningful action. It allows teams to move quickly, prioritise accurately, and avoid misunderstandings. For beginners, it is one of the fastest ways to stand out because strong communication shows maturity, confidence, and awareness of how security work actually operates.
This skill does not require years of experience. It grows naturally when you practise explaining your thinking through real investigations. If you focus on clarity, evidence, and calm reasoning, you will find that interviews feel easier and on-the-job communication becomes second nature.
Nick O'Grady