The WONK Strikes Back

It has been hammered into me for as long as I can remember that content is king. After all if we are reporting on the security posture of the enterprise we must get the content right to be able to present every threat and recommendations for mitigation of the risk through remediation of specific vulnerabilities and other methodologies that assure the business goals of our organizations are met.

One of the core elements of being a WONK is being focused more on style and grammar than content. Often I see WONK documentation that has little substance but looks “pretty” from a grammar perspective. A good friend and mentor told me once that he was chastised for having the wrong “verb tense” in the system security plan that he was submitting to the customer. I really would not have blamed him for going postal.

Content always should be king when we communicate as Information Security Professionals. However in further defining what it means to be an Information Security Professional we should take a long hard self examination of our own core skill sets that define what it means to be in this arena. I have seen absolutely kick @ss engineers who can spot a malformed packet from a mile away but could not write a report about it to save his/her life.

Case in point was a very young engineer who I worked with in Virginia who by all accounts was brilliant. However, when it came to basic communication skills he fell on his face. The tragedy there is that he has so much knowledge and could still be a great leader. Yet I feel that one of the core skills of any great leader is communication.

It’s ironic that most of the great information security engineers fit the mold of “deeply introverted” and thus are socially challenged which has the direct impact of impeding their ability to communicate.

I had a breakthrough this morning when I realized that it is not enough to simply have great content and a presentable looking document that gets the job done delivering that content. I was directly challenged and through that challenge I saw a door of opportunity for myself and possibly for a great number of others who are in similar circumstances.

That possibility is that we, the Information Security Professional community, take on the role of true leaders in the most meaningful way possible. That in addition to providing outstanding knowledge capital (content) and services that we step up to the next level and be extraordinary communicators. Until now I consider myself a “good” communicator.

Consider for incorporation into your permanent thought pathways what it would look like if every Information Security Professional were not just a good communicator but an extraordinary one? What kind of difference could we make on the world? Consider that we can transform from being the guardians at the gate to the masters of the realm?

What has stopped you from taking your career or more importantly your chosen profession to the next level? By next level I am not talking about a pay increase or even a fancier title. I am talking about elevating information security so that no organization, or no single person in the organization, ever thinks about information security as an after thought. What would that look like for you? What would that mean for you in your life to be able to have the level of integration with the other aspects of the enterprise?

I took at step forward today when I realized that in my quest to first transform myself then to impact the world by enrolling others in the possibility that we can ensure the mitigation of risk to information system such that in doing so we allow users and owners of that information to be freed from the world of fear that currently endure.

The WONK reminded me that it is not enough to just communicate well but that I should communicate extraordinarily. In doing so I believe that if you choose the path of being not only an outstanding information security practitioner but an extraordinary communicator that you will have the power to effect positive changes that you never thought possible.