From flooding to cyber attacks

I really regretted being right this weekend.

I mean, it could have been worse: I could have a flooded, settling foundation. You see, I live on a flood plain in west Texas and have bad rain much of the year.

But when I looked under the house I didn't find a flooded crawl space. Instead, I was greeted by the lovely hiss of a leaking water line.

Now in security, I know the importance of first steps. We always want to have a plan to stop things from getting worse before we fix them. Fortunately, the first step here was even simpler than disconnecting my network. All I had to do was turn off the water and then open a faucet to relieve residual pressure.

But while that did stop the leak that was steaming my joists and floorboards, I still had a broken line to fix. That meant climbing into a cramped, dirty crawlspace about 16" tall with tools to replace some pipes.

And of course, once the pipe was fixed it was still damp under the house, and the boards still had a higher-than-normal moisture content. That means we still have a while to go before returning to normal (my doors don't work very well in the meantime), and we need to look out for secondary problems, especially mold.

The cybersecurity pattern isn't unique to cybersecurity. It's just a pattern of life: identify a problem, stop the immediate damage, find and fix the root cause, smooth things back to normal, and finally look for areas to improve to prevent future problems.

And it doesn't have to be hard. It's as simple as looking at something you're worried about, or current trends in cybersecurity that you can address, find an area to work on, and make a little improvement.

Or, think of something that could go wrong and sketch out a plan to correct it when it does. And it doesn't even have to be security: it could be something related to patient care, disaster preparedness, or just a normal business process that is bothering you.

So do something to prepare and make your processes better today and let me know when you do!

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