I feel the HoS needs better defining at what their role is and more discipline to HoS's who shirk their duties to go valid hunt. I've never been a fan of how much combat gear they get in the first place (much of it being on par or within spitting distance of Captain's gear.) For a job people profess is vital to the well being of the station, Chain of Command should have it last in line for Captainship if that is true, since someone competent needs to be in that job and other departments can still function with their head serving as Acting Captain.
If more HoS players did their actual job of running security, dealing with incidents as they come up and firing incompetent officers Security would be better department to play in general. I count on one hand the number of rounds I've played Warden and had a competent and capable of HoS running the department and not leaving all the administrative duties to me while they ran around in maint alone.
There also needs to be more attempts to kill this 'Us vs Them' mentality that has taken hold in Security. Security trusts no one who didn't spawn with an implant. They don't hire from the manifest, they don't let engineers and doctors in to do their job as needed, and they certainly don't interact in any meaningful ways with the crew unless it's to arrest them, beat them or brutalize people. Yes, I'm aware there is a sizeable greytide population that makes it their goal to harass Security and make their live shit. But hard to blame the playerbase for disliking a role that is professed to be entirely combat based, that gets authority over the rest of the crew and is given almost free reign to do what ever they want in the name of valids.
I could write novels over everything that is wrong with our current security meta and policies, but it generally boils down to their SOP is a joke that disappears the instant antags are confirmed, their chain of command and checks and balances to keep them from overbearing on the crew for no reason simply don't do their job, their over reliance on the concept of mindshield/loyalty implants makes them actively avoid interacting with other players when they are aren't arresting them. Not all of our security players are bad, but a significant portion of our regular security players certainly reinforce the stereotype that security players only play the game to kill people.