Translating Military Leadership to Business Success

By: David Gatewood – September 2025
CEO ToriiGate Security Consulting, LLC

Leadership is a universal language, and few institutions teach it as rigorously as the U.S. Army. The now-retired and replaced Basic Leadership Development Course (BLDC) and Primary Leadership Development Course (PLDC) were foundational programs designed to instill core leadership principles in junior non-commissioned officers (NCOs). While these courses were tailored for military effectiveness, their values and principles are remarkably transferable to the civilian business world.

Over the years, I’ve had the distinct privilege of engaging in meaningful conversations with numerous military veterans, exploring how their rigorous training and disciplined mindset translated into successful careers in the corporate business world. This article distills the key insights from those discussions, highlighting the leadership principles, adaptability, and strategic thinking that veterans bring to a successful leadership career in the business world.

Core Leadership Principles from BLDC and PLDC

Both BLDC and PLDC emphasized a structured, values-based approach to leadership. Key principles included:

1. Lead by Example
   Soldiers were taught that leadership starts with personal conduct. In business, this translates to integrity, accountability, and professionalism. A manager who models the behavior they expect from their team builds trust and credibility.

2. Know Yourself and Seek Self-Improvement
   Self-awareness and continuous learning were cornerstones of military leadership. In the corporate world, leaders who actively seek feedback and invest in personal development foster a culture of growth.

3. Be Technically and Tactically Proficient
   In the Army, leaders had to master their craft. Similarly, business leaders must understand their industry, tools, and processes to make informed decisions and earn respect.

4. Make Sound and Timely Decisions
   PLDC emphasized decisiveness under pressure. In business, the ability to assess risks, act swiftly, and adapt to change is critical for success in dynamic markets.

5. Train Your Subordinates as a Team
   Team cohesion and development were vital in the Army. In business, leaders who mentor, coach, and empower their teams create high-performing, resilient organizations.

6. Keep Your People Informed
   Transparent communication was a leadership imperative. In the workplace, clear, consistent communication enhances morale, reduces confusion, and aligns teams with organizational goals.

7. Set the Example
   Ethical leadership and personal discipline were non-negotiable. In business, leaders who embody company values inspire loyalty and drive cultural alignment.

Army Values in the Civilian Workplace

The Army’s core values—Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage (LDRSHIP)—are equally relevant in civilian leadership:

• Loyalty fosters employee retention and brand advocacy.

• Duty drives accountability and follow-through.

• Respect builds inclusive, collaborative environments.

• Selfless Service encourages servant leadership and customer-centricity.

• Honor upholds ethical standards and corporate reputation.

• Integrity ensures trust in leadership and decision-making.

• Personal Courage empowers innovation and principled risk-taking.

Practical Applications in Business Leadership

1. Performance Management
   Just as NCOs conducted counseling and evaluations, business leaders can use structured feedback systems to guide employee development and performance.

2. Crisis Leadership
   Military training prepares leaders for high-stress environments. These skills are invaluable in business during crises like economic downturns, PR challenges, or operational disruptions.

3. Mission Planning and Execution
   The Army’s emphasis on planning, rehearsals, and after-action reviews can be mirrored in project management, strategic planning, and continuous improvement initiatives.

4. Diversity and Inclusion
   The Army is one of the most diverse organizations in the world. Leaders trained in BLDC and PLDC understand the value of unity through diversity—an asset in today’s global business environment.

Conclusion

The leadership lessons from BLDC and PLDC are timeless and borderless. As businesses seek leaders who are adaptable, principled, and people-focused, the military’s leadership training offers a powerful blueprint. Veterans and those trained in these programs bring not only discipline and resilience but also a deep understanding of what it means to lead with purpose.

Notes (course replacement according to Microsoft Copilot)

• PLDC → WLC: October 2005

• WLC → BLC: Fully operational by February 1, 2019

Redefining Career Growth: Why Corporations Must Offer Multiple Career Paths

By: David Gatewood – August 2025
CEO ToriiGate Security Consulting, LLC

In today’s dynamic and diverse workforce, the traditional notion that leadership is synonymous with management is increasingly outdated. Forward-thinking organizations are recognizing that leadership can—and should—emerge from any role within the company. To foster innovation, retain top talent, and build a resilient organizational culture, corporations must design career paths that reflect this broader understanding of leadership.

Leadership Is Not a Title—It’s a Mindset

Leadership is often mistakenly equated with hierarchical authority. However, true leadership is about influence, initiative, and impact—qualities that can be demonstrated by individuals at any level. A software engineer who mentors junior developers, a customer service representative who consistently improves client satisfaction, or a marketing specialist who drives cross-functional collaboration—all are leaders in their own right.

By recognizing and rewarding leadership behaviors across all roles, companies can cultivate a culture where initiative and ownership are valued as much as formal authority.

Developing Leaders from Within

Internal leadership development is one of the most sustainable strategies for long-term success. Employees who rise through the ranks bring institutional knowledge, cultural alignment, and a deep understanding of the company’s mission. However, this requires more than just promoting high performers into management roles.

Organizations must invest in structured development programs that identify potential leaders early, provide mentorship, and offer rotational opportunities across departments. These programs should be inclusive of both managerial and non-managerial tracks, ensuring that leadership development is not limited to those pursuing people management.

The Specialist Track: Growth Without Management

Not every employee aspires to manage people—and that’s not a shortcoming. Many professionals find fulfillment in deepening their expertise rather than shifting into supervisory roles. For these individuals, a specialist or technical track offers a meaningful path forward.

Companies should establish parallel career ladders that allow employees to advance based on skill, contribution, and innovation. For example:

• Technical Fellowships for engineers or scientists

• Principal or Lead roles in design, analytics, or finance

• Subject Matter Expert (SME) designations with strategic influence

These roles should come with commensurate compensation, visibility, and decision-making authority, reinforcing that leadership and impact are not confined to management.

Building a Culture That Supports Diverse Career Journeys

To successfully implement multiple career paths, organizations must:

• Redefine success metrics to include influence, collaboration, and innovation—not just team size or budget.

• Train managers to support diverse career aspirations and avoid bias toward traditional advancement models.

• Communicate clearly about available paths and the criteria for progression on each.

When employees see that their unique strengths and goals are valued, they are more likely to stay engaged, motivated, and loyal.

Conclusion: Leadership Beyond Management

The future of work demands a more inclusive and flexible approach to career development. By decoupling leadership from management and offering multiple, equally respected career paths, corporations can unlock the full potential of their workforce. In doing so, they not only empower individuals but also build organizations that are more innovative, adaptive, and resilient.

Leadership is not confined to management roles. By recognizing leadership potential across all functions and providing diverse career paths, companies can develop true leaders from within and support the growth of every employee—whether they aspire to manage people or master their craft.

Weaponizing Generative AI: Emerging TTPs in Adversarial Operations

By: Rick Froggatt - July 2025
CIO ToriiGate Security Consulting, LLC

Introduction

The proliferation of generative AI tools has opened new avenues for threat actors to scale malicious operations, automate reconnaissance, and subvert traditional defenses. As enterprise adoption grows, adversaries are rapidly adapting, exploiting vulnerabilities that are unique to large language models (LLMs) and other AI-driven platforms. This article explores the most recent tactics, techniques, and procedures being used by malicious actors, along with the strategic implications for defenders.

Key Exploitation Techniques

Threat actors are actively deploying prompt injection attacks by embedding adversarial instructions into user-generated content or backend data. This allows them to manipulate AI behavior, cause data leakage, and override safety systems. Data poisoning has also emerged as a viable tactic, wherein attackers feed corrupted data into training sets or context inputs. This can degrade model performance, inject bias, or introduce misinformation into AI outputs.

Jailbreak prompts continue to evolve, offering attackers pathways to bypass content moderation and generate prohibited outputs such as exploit code or phishing kits. Models like FraudGPT are being marketed within dark web communities to generate malware, RATs, and keyloggers with little technical overhead. Meanwhile, LLMs are increasingly used for automated reconnaissance—mining open-source intelligence and crafting highly tailored social engineering payloads at scale.

Defensive Countermeasures

To mitigate these emerging risks, organizations are investing in adaptive multi-factor authentication and behavioral analytics to detect anomalous patterns resulting from AI-enabled attacks. Red team simulations now incorporate generative AI scenarios to prepare defenders for novel threat vectors. Monitoring dark web channels for AI-related developments is also essential, as new tools and exploit kits emerge with alarming frequency. On the technical front, input sanitization strategies must be redefined to account for context-aware attacks, especially those aimed at prompt injection vulnerabilities.

Strategic Implications

The rise of generative AI in cyber operations marks a pivotal shift—from skill-centric exploitation to scalable, automated tooling. Nation-states and cybercrime syndicates are probing AI systems for capabilities that extend beyond traditional attack vectors. While these TTPs often resemble conventional methods, the velocity and reach enabled by generative AI are unprecedented.

Security teams must evolve by integrating AI threat models into tabletop exercises, refining detection logic to capture AI-generated artifacts, and establishing governance frameworks around model inputs and outputs. The threat landscape has changed, and with it, so must our defenses.

Contact us: ToriiGate Security Consulting, LLC

Nurturing Growth Beyond the Role: The True Responsibility of Leadership

By: David Gatewood – June 2025
CEO ToriiGate Security Consulting, LLC

It is widely understood that leaders in management roles dedicate significant time and effort to locating, recruiting, and assembling teams of highly skilled professionals. These individuals not only elevate the team’s overall capabilities but also contribute to a culture of collaboration and camaraderie. Building such a team is a critical part of leadership—but it is only the beginning.

Once a leader has cultivated a high-performing team capable of meeting and exceeding expectations, the next challenge emerges: how to ensure each team member continues to grow on a personal and professional level.

True leadership extends beyond task delegation and performance management. It involves recognizing potential in individuals—often before they recognize it in themselves. Many team members may doubt their ability to take on new challenges or step into unfamiliar roles. It is the leader’s responsibility to identify these hidden capabilities and create opportunities for them to be realized. As each individual grows, so too does the collective strength and adaptability of the team.

A strong leader fosters this growth by mentoring, guiding, and encouraging team members to stretch beyond their comfort zones. They do not stifle ambition or hoard talent for the sake of team stability. Instead, they act as catalysts for development, ensuring that each person has the support and resources needed to thrive.

However, leadership also requires the humility and foresight to recognize when a team member is ready to move beyond the current environment. This can be one of the most difficult aspects of leadership—acknowledging that the best path forward for an individual may lie outside the team or even the organization. Supporting that transition, even at the cost of losing a valuable contributor, is a hallmark of ethical and effective leadership.

In doing so, leaders demonstrate a commitment not just to the success of the team, but to the long-term success of each individual. They become known not only as managers of performance, but as builders of people.

Conclusion

Leadership is more than managing tasks and achieving goals—it is about cultivating potential, fostering growth, and enabling others to succeed, even when that success leads them elsewhere. The true measure of a leader lies not in how many people they manage, but in how many they empower to rise. By embracing this broader vision of leadership, we not only build stronger teams, but also contribute to a culture of continuous development and shared success.

Exploiting "Living Off the Land" Tactics: How Red Teams Bypass Security Controls

By: Rick Froggatt - May 2025
CIO ToriiGate Security Consulting, LLC

In modern cybersecurity operations, Red Teams continuously evolve their techniques to simulate real-world adversaries and rigorously test an organization's defenses. Among the most effective tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) leveraged by Red Teams is the concept of "Living Off the Land" (LOTL). This strategy involves using native system tools and legitimate administrative functions to evade detection, bypass security controls, and achieve operational objectives.

 Understanding "Living Off the Land" (LOTL)

LOTL refers to the exploitation of pre-installed utilities, operating system features, and legitimate third-party applications to conduct malicious activities without introducing custom malware. This approach allows attackers to blend in with normal administrative activity, making detection by traditional security tools significantly more challenging.

Common LOTL techniques include:

·       Abusing System Binaries: Using built-in Windows utilities such as PowerShell, wmic, and certutil for reconnaissance, execution, and lateral movement.

·       Leveraging Native Protocols: Exploiting protocols like Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), Server Message Block (SMB), and Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) for persistence and data exfiltration.

·       Hijacking Legitimate Processes: Injecting malicious commands into trusted applications to bypass endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions.

 How Red Teams Use LOTL TTPs to Bypass Security Controls

Red Teams carefully craft LOTL techniques to assess an organization's ability to detect and respond to sophisticated threats. Here’s how they typically leverage these tactics to bypass security measures:

1. Evasion of Signature-Based Detection
   Traditional security tools rely on signatures to identify malicious executables. By using native tools instead of custom malware, Red Teams can avoid triggering alerts that would otherwise flag an unknown binary.

2. Minimizing Behavioral Anomalies
   Security solutions often detect suspicious activity by identifying behavioral anomalies. Red Teams mimic administrative behaviors by utilizing native commands, ensuring their actions align with standard operating procedures.

3. Lateral Movement Without Dropping Malware
   LOTL tactics enable Red Teams to move across a network without deploying additional malware. For example, they can use WMI or PsExec to remotely execute commands without writing files to disk—reducing forensic artifacts and detection opportunities.

4. Data Exfiltration Using Trusted Channels
   Instead of using external hacking tools, Red Teams exploit legitimate services such as cloud storage or email clients to siphon data. This method ensures traffic appears benign, avoiding scrutiny from network monitoring solutions.

 Mitigating LOTL-Based Attacks

Organizations can defend against LOTL threats by implementing proactive security strategies:

• Advanced Logging & Monitoring: Enable PowerShell script logging, Windows Event auditing, and endpoint telemetry to detect anomalous LOTL behaviors.

• Application Allowlisting: Restrict execution privileges for high-risk system binaries to prevent unauthorized misuse.

• Behavioral Analytics & Threat Hunting: Deploy machine learning-driven behavioral analytics to identify deviations in legitimate tool usage.

• Red Team Engagements: Regular Red Team exercises help security teams refine detection capabilities and response strategies against LOTL techniques.

  Conclusion

The use of "Living Off the Land" tactics by Red Teams showcases the need for a modernized security posture beyond conventional detection mechanisms. As adversaries continuously refine their techniques, organizations must prioritize proactive defense measures, threat hunting, and advanced monitoring to mitigate LOTL-based threats effectively.

By embracing an adaptive security mindset and leveraging Red Team assessments, organizations can fortify their defenses against stealthy adversaries who exploit the very tools meant to maintain enterprise functionality.

Do you need assistance? Contact us at ToriiGate Security Consulting, LLC. We're here to help ensure your business stays secure.