Musings from an IR - Meeting and Parting with Strangers
After nearly two whole months in this Cyber Security Incident Responder role, I remain amused by the universally expressed sentiment from every new person I meet. Specifically, that they're pleased to make my acquaintance, but sincerely hope our interactions are short-lived and that they wish to never need to cross paths with me again, as representative of all people in my role.
On the one hand, as a self-professed deep introvert, making cold contact with complete strangers on a daily basis is a draining ordeal, despite my extensive experience with many types of colleagues and clients. What mitigates the fatigue is that firstly, most of the people I interact with are experts in their disciplines, which I appreciate both in principle, and from the delightful side effect of learning a surprising amount about what they care about professionally and what processes they follow.
Secondly as they are almost always embroiled in a stressful situation, they appreciate my presence as guide and prompter of questions. The sense perhaps that I have "seen it before" or at least can assure them that as with all events, this too shall pass, gives them a form of comfort much as I imagine medical staff and police or firefighters as being capable of projecting in their work.
Another thing I'm thankful for is the abundance of text-based communication channels. While triage and cadence calls are integral to running most cases, whereupon I draw upon my experience in producing the best quality of meeting minutes that I can, the initial contact and formal communications are in writing, whether through instant messaging, other company-sanctioned tooling, or even SMS. As my role involves fully documenting cases such that they withstand audits and legal scrutiny, I prefer strongly to minimise the chances of mishearing or failing to take down what may at the time seem like tangential points, but which turn out to be part of the crux of a situation. Also a challenge is that in most incidents, the key contacts speak English as a second, third, or fourth language: my years of picking up on their versions of the lingua franca have proven invaluable in ensuring my comprehension of a case.
I'll be certain to share more thoughts in the months to come.
On the one hand, as a self-professed deep introvert, making cold contact with complete strangers on a daily basis is a draining ordeal, despite my extensive experience with many types of colleagues and clients. What mitigates the fatigue is that firstly, most of the people I interact with are experts in their disciplines, which I appreciate both in principle, and from the delightful side effect of learning a surprising amount about what they care about professionally and what processes they follow.
Secondly as they are almost always embroiled in a stressful situation, they appreciate my presence as guide and prompter of questions. The sense perhaps that I have "seen it before" or at least can assure them that as with all events, this too shall pass, gives them a form of comfort much as I imagine medical staff and police or firefighters as being capable of projecting in their work.
Another thing I'm thankful for is the abundance of text-based communication channels. While triage and cadence calls are integral to running most cases, whereupon I draw upon my experience in producing the best quality of meeting minutes that I can, the initial contact and formal communications are in writing, whether through instant messaging, other company-sanctioned tooling, or even SMS. As my role involves fully documenting cases such that they withstand audits and legal scrutiny, I prefer strongly to minimise the chances of mishearing or failing to take down what may at the time seem like tangential points, but which turn out to be part of the crux of a situation. Also a challenge is that in most incidents, the key contacts speak English as a second, third, or fourth language: my years of picking up on their versions of the lingua franca have proven invaluable in ensuring my comprehension of a case.
I'll be certain to share more thoughts in the months to come.
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