The Parallels Between Information Security (DevSecOps) and Cattle Farming.

Christopher Neitzert
4 min readMar 18, 2024

During my high school years, I found myself working on a farm that, while not colossal by any means, it was a world unto itself. For me, the farm was a bit of a shelter from the chaos and tumult of my teenage years. It was during this time, amidst the daily grind of life, that I stumbled upon lessons that would later resonate profoundly with my career in Information Technology and Cybersecurity, more specifically, in the niche of DevSecOps.

DALL-E’s interpretation of this article

The parable began on what seemed like an ordinary day until we discovered a total zero day critical issue: the cattle feed was somehow contaminated with metal shavings. The diagnosis was ‘traumatic reticuloperitonitis,’ a condition as ominous as it sounds, where the ingested metal wreaked havoc on the cows’ insides. This predicament transcended a mere agricultural emergency; it served as a stark parallel to the unforeseen cybersecurity threats that I had no idea I would later face in the realm of technology that I would base my career in, where hidden vulnerabilities can and often suddenly compromise an entire system’s integrity.

The farm owner, Buck a no-nonsense pragmatic man who spent his life managing livestock took a no-frills approach and rallied several of us roustabouts for an emergency intervention. Our mission was starkly laid out: to save the…

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Christopher Neitzert
Christopher Neitzert

Written by Christopher Neitzert

Greetings, My name is Christopher, a Human, Hacker, Technologist, Occasional Artist. These are some of the things rattling around in my head.

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