Zachary
Zachary
Aug 8, 2017 · 3 min read

I don’t mean to presume too much, but I think we are kindred spirits. While I’ve never been a full CISO, I assume the majority of the E-Discovery and public information components for ours. I do this alone and without much in the way of support or safety nets. In fact, there have been times where I’ve been on the radar of the C-suite in a most uncomfortable manner.

“Surround yourself”

We have a tradition — one that has been around for over 20 years apparently — called the “Thursday Night Debrief” or something. It’s $2 pint night, and it’s the best place for us and our community of security professionals to let loose. Something I have to be careful of, however, is when I get a couple pints in me and I start getting questions on procedure. I have to divert them to business hours.

“Meditate”/”Full Contact Sports”

This isn’t something I’ve heard discussed outside of me mentioning it from time to time. I do, however, put a strong emphasis on meditation because it is the only time I can really look at the big picture calmly when my day-to-day is hectic and unpredictable. Given recent events that elevated my blood pressure from a healthy 110/70ish to 140/106 (or so) in the course of a few days, I had to re-evaluate my priority and approach to meditation. I hit stress levels so high that I began slipping and compounding issues even further.

I relieved myself of duty (took a personal day for the first time in months) and committed to meditation and separation from work — something I have a hard time doing. I tried walking at the local park connected to my apartment and zen meditating in some pristine vistas. After a few hours in 100F+ and high humidity Texas weather, I had relieved myself of much of the stress but not fully. I was still compromised by stress.

I found what I was looking for in virtual reality. I’ve owned an Oculus Rift CV1 since launch, but never really got into it. There’s been some good content that really gets you into the game, but all that I tried pales in comparison to one game: Robo Recall (free if you buy Oculus Touch).

In effect, Robo Recall’s primary benefit is its challenge and ability to make you work harder that you ever would on traditional exercise equipment. It has a similar therapeutic benefit as going all-out on a punching bag. It even rewards you for creative and “blind rage” kind of over-the-top action and encourages you to compete with tens of thousands of others across the globe on a global leader-board.

I’ve picked up the game only intending to play for a few minutes and find myself four hours later drenched in sweat, out of breath, and completely exhausted without realizing the time had passed. It also helps that the premise is malware-infected robots and you’re doing information security (just with guns and ripping robot heads off). Maybe it’s just me who gets this deep into such a game that I lose measurable amounts of weight each session, but I do it to let my frustrations go. This is my current form of “meditation”.

“Binge Watch”

I prefer Star Trek and BSG because my CISO has qualities of both Captain Picard and Commander Adama, but I love post-apocalyptic content. Fallout is one of my favorite game franchises — not because I want to see the world burn — because it puts things into perspective.

I also binge watch The Dark Knight series of Batman movies because sometimes I feel like I’m our Batman.

Conclusion

I’ve fallen victim to many of the pitfalls of mental/physical health I’ve observed first hand with my CISO and still have to do my duty. Sometimes, I can’t properly do my duty with a sound mind if I don’t adhere to taking care of myself. You’ve really hit the nail on the head with this one.

Zachary

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Zachary

Infosec, compliance, IT risk mgmt, eDiscovery, etc in higher education | Senior Analyst in IT Risk & Compliance @TAMU #ProfessionalOpinionOnly #NotOfficial