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The Parallels Between Information Security (DevSecOps) and Cattle Farming.
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.
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 cattle from what threatened to tear them apart from the insides. In retrospect the parallels to cybersecurity were uncanny — here we were, facing a silent but deadly threat across a very large attack surface, much like a sophisticated malware infection in a sprawling digital network.
The first step was containment, akin to isolating a compromised segment of a network to prevent further spread of a cyber threat. We had to round up all 500 cattle, a daunting task that tested our limits. Each cow, an individual entity with its own temperament, reminded me of the diverse components within an IT infrastructure, each reacting differently under stress and requiring a unique approach to manage.
The treatment phase was where the real ingenuity kicked in. We used a large syringe-like device to force a molasses-coated magnet down the throat of each cow, to remain within their stomachs until market day. The simplicity yet effectiveness of this…
