About

Most communications support for security and privacy teams arrives after something goes wrong. Melanie Ensign built Discernible to change that.

Melanie spent two decades leading security and privacy communications inside some of the world's most scrutinized organizations, including Facebook, Uber, and AT&T. In every role, she fell in love with security teams that were technically excellent but organizationally invisible, and communications teams that were waiting for a crisis rather than helping prevent one. When she brought these disciplines together — improving how security teams communicated with leadership, with peers, and across functions — the results were consistent. Teams built political capital, change management got easier, and public apologies became less necessary.

She founded Discernible to make that kind of support available to more organizations.

For more than a decade, Melanie has also led communications for DEF CON, the world's largest hacker community. She is an accomplished scuba diver and draws on the discipline of managing high-stakes, high-uncertainty situations (where preparation and clear communication are often the difference between a near-miss and a catastrophe) in her work with security and privacy leaders.

Discernible contracts with a network of specialists across executive leadership, organizational behavior, engineering, risk management, and product development. The value isn't in any single discipline — it's in how they work together.