A few weeks ago my “brother from another mother” Allen Baranov wrote a blog  post where he told me to basically chill out and enjoy life without thinking about information security in everything that I see or eat when I wrote a blog equating a pumpkin muffin that tasted like a banana nut bread muffin to information security. I can’t help it. As I go through my day I see various things and think about how they can or do apply to the world of information security. Well the other day I saw something that just struck me in such a way that I had to reach way back to find a parallel but I think I found one.

I’ve noticed a lot lately, and I assume part of it is due to the economy, that people are doing what it takes to get by. Recently I’ve seen several people riding motorcycles to and from work. Now here in the south it is getting to be that time of year where the weather is such that riding a motorcycle is not uncommon. What I’ve noticed though is that people are riding bikes that are way too small for them. I’m talking 200 pound guys riding 250cc bikes and 300 pound guys riding 500cc bikes. Now, I’m not sure if this means anything to you but let me put it into context somewhat.  Picture Arnold Schwarzenegger riding a 20” child’s bicycle. Not a pretty picture. So just how does this apply to information security?

Just as these guys are getting by with what they can afford so are many of us being forced to do the same. We’re being forced to put our 300 pound programs on a 500cc product. We’re having to reach way back (just like I’m doing here) to make things work in a way that still keeps us secure. We’re having to make products do what they weren’t designed to do and we’re having to rely on our teams to do more than they would normally do. Actually this can be a very good thing. It forces us to think outside of the box and to improve our skill sets. It causes us to take a hard look at what we want to do and realign it with what we can do based on the fact that we can’t buy new “toys”.

It forces us to put our bloated programs on a much smaller platform and hopefully realize that we need to lose some of that bloat. It can cause us to rid our environments of things that are not really providing us any value so we can spend that money on another product that will provide us value. Kinda like shedding fat and replacing it with muscle. Then when others see us on that lean bike they will think that we look lean and good on it instead of ridiculous.