Security +1…
Have you noticed when you go to networking lunches and conferences, you meet a lot of like-minded, passionate people? Like earlier this week at the Australian Women in Security Network (AWSN) Lunch for November - I looked around the room and thought….what a fabulous bunch of security-focussed friends, experts, professionals. And Mark Jones spoke about the negative impact of relying heavily on technology (not people) to secure your business. Then Diane Loi and Sofie Christensen spoke about the challenges of finding career pathways when you exit university with IT Security skills. After extensive questions and discussion, we all went back to work to ponder over the little nuggets of insight we gained from the guest speakers and each other.
High-fives all round, right?
Given my passion for considering new ways to approach information security, I thought of Einstein’s now overused, overworked (but still pithy) quote that ‘We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them’. And our current problem has been a problem for some time – that security people always strive to get better at security but there’s not enough other people in organisations thinking about security.
So… What if I challenged you to find someone so unlikely to attend a security related event that it’s not funny and invite them as your +1. What if you introduced them to the wacky world of infosec? So they could hear things from other horses’ mouths like the value of security awareness, get them thinking about the role they play in protecting their business and drive home the opportunities needed for grads so that our industry blossoms.
Before you stop me … obviously there will be events to which it would not be appropriate or beneficial to take someone along. It’s a given that closed events that discuss sensitive incidents or conferences that talk technical wouldn’t be the place to take your +1. But there are plenty of meet ups, discussions and industry gatherings that would welcome leaders, managers, teams, grads, etc. from non-security roles to come along. So I challenge you to find a +1 and an appropriate event and get amongst it in 2017. If you can’t find someone to come along as your +1 to a security related free lunch, we are probably in deeper trouble than we first thought. Who will be your +1?
#infosec #informationsecurity #securityawareness