In conversation with Matt Olney and Matt Watchinksi
Matt Watchinski: We have people in our teams who are having to look at the worst of the internet, and essentially place a tag on it, in order to protect others from seeing it. That can be hugely traumatic.
At Talos we have a lot of internal process to help with that, including company counseling.
If you’re a manager, it’s important to know how much time your team is working on something, so you can rotate those responsibilities, and check in with them regularly to see how they’re doing.
Matt Olney:
What we have to do is be constantly ready and try and fail as little as possible in the process.
That's a very weird mentality – to show up to work and say, “Today, I'm going to lose as little as possible.” It's not, “I'm going to get to the office and I'm going to win.” It’s a lot to get your head around. We can never be done. The game changes all the time.
Matt Watchinski: The realm of security is very broad, and it can get extremely deep. My advice to avoid being overwhelmed by that is to look at security like you’re standing in front of an orchestra – there are violins, tubas, drums, etc. Every single one of those instruments takes a different skill to play, even if you understand how to read music.
To become a master of any one of those things, you have to put in tens of thousands of hours. And you're not going to be able to do that for every single instrument in that room, no matter how good you are.
So, find the topics in the security realm that are most interesting to you, and pursue those.
Security is an agile game, and oftentimes shifting on the fly is required. You don’t need to be specialized to do that.
Being a security generalist is often a lot of people's career goal, and they're very successful at it. It’s a highly useful and utilitarian contribution to security.
Matt Olney: There is an entire planet worth of bad software out there. Hardly any of which you're going to be able to specialize in. What's key is that you're able to pick up what you need to know quickly.
I'm the head of threat intelligence for Talos. I don't know every APT actor number. I look up APT actor numbers every day, because it's never wedged in my head. But when I need to communicate about something, I can go through our documentation to figure out what the collective understanding of it is, and then push out an effective communication to our partners.
Security is much more about that than it is about being a super specialist in any one skill.
Matt Olney: If you’re struggling, speaking to a mental health specialist is something I highly recommend. Because that person is trained to not only understand what you're telling them, but they can parse it from the context that you're telling them, i.e., from a wounded state.
They can extract details out and quickly get to the root cause. They can also tell you the name of whatever issue it is you might be experiencing. As someone who's gone through this process, getting the ‘name’ is very powerful. It means I have context, I can learn about it, I can be aware of it, and most important of all, I manage it.
That moment when someone says, “This isn’t about weakness. You have a brain chemistry that causes these things to happen. And this is how we deal with it,” is as liberating as any medication or therapy session.
Also, remember that during this time when you're feeling alone, you've never been less alone. There are so many people that are feeling what you're feeling right now.
Matt Watchinski: I was talking to one of my friends recently who's served in the military for over 20 years. And he was telling me that if there’s a physical issue with your health, you tend to be more empathetic to yourself.
But when you're going through a very stressful situation, it's such a different experience. And that's a big question mark. Why is it such a different experience? Why can't you have empathy for yourself? That needs to change.
We're seeing so many people who are struggling at the moment, who may not have had to deal with mental health issues in the past. It’s important that we see a clear path to addressing them, and that they don't feel like they have to hide it. It’s a very natural, normal human reaction to the couple of years we’ve had. Getting help as soon as possible is key to ensuring that we don’t allow our mental health to decline further.
