Vulnerability Management - Boston, MA

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So yesterday my ReacHIRE cohort visited a data security firm in downtown Boston. The day reminded me of many things about my life as a full-time worker. 

The day started with unwarranted elation. I got my kids dressed, fed and on the yellow bus all by myself (BH --my husband --is traveling). I am pretty sure their pants were on frontwards but possibly one was inside out. Whatever. 

I hopped in the car for what is usually a 25 minute drive to the Alewife T station...I was singing to the Eagles (I love Sirius) when the traffic came to a dead halt in Lexington. So instead of arriving at 8:05 at the station (I was already fantasizing about a huge latte at the Starbucks in Boston and taking my time getting to the company), I got there at 8:32. I ran down the escalator, chucked my card in the tollbooth, and hopped onto the subway car just as the doors were closing. Yep sweating and puffing, but I was on. So much for unwarranted elation.

But enough about the commute. That was the bad stuff about working days. Back to the good stuff: The company we visited was only 2 minutes from the T station at Downtown Crossing so I was at the reception desk at 8:58 and sitting at the conference table at 9:01. Love high speed elevators. 

As the first two presenters got started on talking about the company, I admit I fell a little bit in love. Not with the presenters, which would be inappropriate, but with the company. What they are doing is much like my first job except fast-forwarded to the 21st Century (yep, I had the other job in the last century). The ideas are the same: the execution completely different. The company is different; a startup where I worked for a large "non-profit" association. But the fun is there.

My first job was in risk management and security for a large credit card company in California. Oh, all right, it was Visa, you can see that on my resume. That job was SO MUCH FUN! It was like cops and robbers -- and we really did have former FBI agents on staff. We were always trying to keep one step ahead, but usually trying to be less than one step behind, the bad guys. Visa would put a hologram on the credit card: within days the bad guys had copied it. Ditto magnetic strips, coded numbers around the banners, whatever. We had a top secret lab where a chosen few got to see the latest in bad guy hi-jinks. I only visited once in three years but I still remember thinking "THIS IS SO COOL!"  Too bad I had to get an MBA. Oh, okay, maybe I would have gotten tired of the job in the end but mostly it was always a new challenge and a new solution.

Data security reminds me much of this. Continually checking networks and assets for known threats, and being ready for unknown threats by practicing "disaster recovery". 

The new term I learned for all of this is "vulnerability management." And it reminded me of talking with one Visa risk management guy who said to me "it is no wonder that we are always behind--bad guys take this even more seriously than we do. They spend all their time being bad while we treat this as a job. To them it is life." That makes us vulnerable.

I love what they are doing. One of their offerings is hacking into their clients' computers and showing them where they didn't take the appropriate protection or recovery steps. They have programs to discover and fight the vulnerabilities. They are the cops to the data robbers of today. 

A reminder perhaps that one can find fun jobs. Maybe in two different centuries. Millenia even.