"Skills Gap": The Need for New Software

Cyber Security Skills Gap Musings

Remember when desktop publishing opened up layout capabilities to the masses? Or the more recent expansion of access to video editing and publishing capabilities... YouTube is a place where anybody can publish whatever they want. It wasn't always like this.

The expanded access to content creation and publishing has to do mostly with the emergence of software which is usable by mere mortals.

In every discipline, and especially in cyber security, there are experts and savants. Folks who just live within their field, and probably couldn't do anything else. Maybe they are so good because of the way their brains are wired; maybe they found themselves in the field early in their lives and were molded to it. Whatever the case, these high-performing savants and alpha geeks have formed powerful internal modes of thought tailored specifically to their fields. They outperform everyone else and, whether intentionally or not, create a mental wall around their excellence. Those who cannot interact with the alpha geeks within the requisite thought mode are outsiders, customers, supplicants, or in the way.

I believe this is largely due to the need to have a shared conceptual model. But I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit. First comes the individual. The intelligent person who could choose from among many different fields, and be effective given the right training and tools. How does this person access a conceptual model for something as complex as cyber security? How does this person find a toehold in cyberspace from which to expand knowledge? People learn best when some core part of a discipline starts to make sense to them and they can relate the rest of the discipline to that principle or practice.

The tools at hand for the nascent cyber operative are primitive with respect to user interface and conceptual modelling. Just getting Snort running can be a nightmare. Capturing and looking at packets with tcpdump or wireshark is not for the uninitiated. The entire suite of standard cyber security tools is esoteric and difficult to grasp. Just as in the disciplines of video creation and desktop publishing, cyber security will benefit from software which makes the core concepts and data accessible in the form of an interactive conceptual model. Now the individual has a toehold and can interact in order to learn.

As people become comfortable with a new conceptual model for cyber security, as implemented within software, they are now able to collaborate with each other... because they now share the conceptual model. They have a shared context within which to discuss issues and illustrate facts. The wall falls down.

Call it a pivot. I no longer think of Deep Node's Timewell as just a cyber security tool. I think of it as software for training people and establishing a shared conceptual model of cyberspace.

cyberspace

THE GAME IS REAL

site v1 is live

http://de.epno.de

... and the timewell is born ... {roll video}

If I had to choose one tragic story to illustrate the progress of American civilization in the 20th century, it would be the tale of Milli Vanilli. It's a story of music people like, enjoy... then reject because the dancers aren't the same people as the singers. Simply knowing this triggers the judgmental streak so typical of our society with its Puritan roots, and now, in the new millenium, rendered savage and omniscient by the Internet and reality television. The psychology of Rob and Fab is the truly tragic part. Rob in particular could never repair his self-identity. And languishing somewhere in history is the story of the unsung genius who actually WROTE the songs. Oh wait, there were five of them... thanks wikipedia.

The future of the Internet is not the web. It is experiences.