Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Jedi of Information Security

One of the things that led to the creation of this blog was a discussion I had with someone a couple weeks ago about the various fighting styles of the Jedi. Yes, I'm talking about the same Jedi from the Star Wars Universe.

It occurred to me that just as the Jedi had different fighting styles and preferences, so to is the case for Information Security professionals. I started trying to categorize the fighting styles of the Information Security professional and I found that some of the styles even match up to the various forms of lightsaber combat.

As I kept thinking about this over the next few days I started to discover more similarities between the Jedi and the contemporary Information Security professional. For example, each Jedi Padawan goes on a mission to find the right pieces and construct his or her own lightsaber much in the same way that a security professional assembles the tool set that he or she will use in the battle to protect information. In the Star Wars Universe there are good and evil practitioners of the force, just as we in the security field have white hat and black hat hackers.

Finally, I thought that there might just be enough material here that I could put it all together into a blog and combine it with some of the other thoughts that I've had as I chronicle my own growth and understanding of information security. In the word of information security I consider myself to be a Padawan learner and as I've compared the practice of information security with the practices of the Jedi I've found that it has led to a greater understanding of the former. It has helped me to accept that even though there is so much that I have yet to learn about information security, there is also quite a bit that I have learned already and even the masters are still learning and improving their craft. I hope my thoughts on the comparison of Jedi and information security practitioners proves to be insightful, entertaining, and light hearted.

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