Internal champion guide
What the internal champion owns and how to drive adoption of Forest across the security team.
Last updated June 1, 2026
Every successful Forest rollout has one person who owns it. The internal champion is not expected to score every capability alone. The job is to coordinate the people who can, keep the assessment honest, and turn Forest output into decisions.
What you own
As champion, you hold the account together. You confirm scope, recruit domain owners, and make sure current and target maturity reflect reality rather than aspiration. You also decide who acts on recommendations, since an assessment that no one acts on is just a report.
A large part of the role is interpretation. When a domain owner pushes back on a score, you trace it: the Forest Intelligence Service is explainable, so any number connects to a specific capability, its maturity, and its criticality. That traceability lets you resolve disputes with evidence instead of opinion.
How to drive adoption
Start narrow. A credible baseline in a few domains builds more trust than a thin pass across all 12.
Make criticality a conversation. The 1 to 3 rating shapes priority, and owners often disagree usefully about it.
Tie reviews to real moments: audits, renewals, board updates. Forest is most persuasive when it answers a question someone is already asking.
The champion's quiet superpower is honesty. Inflated maturity produces a flattering score and a useless roadmap.
Lean on the implementation checklist to stand things up and the rollout checklist to scale. Route blockers through the support process.