Jiu Jitsu vs InfoSec: Vocabulary
This is part of a series comparing Jiu Jitsu with InfoSec.
BJJ can be daunting to the white belt, because of the vast variety of moves, but even more so because of the learning curve associated with the vocabulary. Many of the moves and positions are Portuguese (Brazilian) or Japanese (from the original Jiu Jitsu and Judo roots in Japan), which certainly doesn’t help a new student who doesn’t speak those languages. Some of the vocabulary is named after the people who invented the technique, like De La Riva Guard. And no, that’s not pronounced “Ree-vah” it’s “Hee-vah” because Brazilians don’t say the letter R as a hard R, it’s more of an H sound. That just adds more to the curve, especially as the student hears it spoken quickly during class, as opposed to spelled out, making it hard to Google it and learn more at home.
In this case, not only does InfoSec also have this vocabulary problem, but InfoSec beats BJJ by having way more terms and acronyms. The body of knowledge is literally everything in the regular IT world (development and system administration), plus all the security specific stuff. From stack overflows to TLS, from the Bell-LaPadula Model (yes, I went there) to deserialization attacks, and everything in between that not any one practitioner can completely comprehend.
In both cases, this makes the assimilation and upstart of new practitioners difficult. Sure, there are ways to jump start some of this, such as seminars and boot camps, but the practitioner who is eager to learn new terms will do better than the practitioner who is stifled by the sheer quantity and does nothing to overcome it. I’m convinced that in most cases, the concepts are simple, once they’re broken down, so take the time to have somebody break it down for you and add the new terminology to your active vocabulary.
Read more: Jiu Jitsu vs InfoSec: Highs and Lows
