Dog and Pony days have begun - SOS reflections

I had my first ITS-internal dog and pony show with Security and Operation Services a couple of weeks ago. It was well structured, content rich and gave me a much better handle on what people in the group do and how they do it. I knew most of the people in the group to begin with, but it was still good to see where people worked and get exposure to some of the tools of the trade.

The biggest revelation I had from my time with the group is that I'm beginning to challenge the way I've been thinking about SOS for all of these years. Up until a couple of weeks ago, I had regularly thought of SOS as an enforcement function IT at Penn State, not too unlike the function of policing or law enforcement. But as the "show" went along, I was struck more and more by how much the group reminded me of a hospital or health care. There is an emergency room function, well-care visits, epidemiology, preventative inoculation, reactive inoculation, and lots of awareness raising to be done about good network and server health. Looking at SOS this way has changed the way I look at incidences and the future. I wonder what kind of perspective shift I might get in upcoming "shows."

Can't wait to get to know more about what we do and how we do it.

One last item I'd like to share about the visit is my last question to the group. I asked where is it that I should "hang out" on the web to better understand what kinds of knowledge gathering the group does. The 5 places I took away with me are:

Stormcenter (SANS)
Search Security
FIRST
SecurityFocus
REN-ISAC

If you're interested in paying more attention to what our colleagues in SOS watch closely, that's a good start.