Sooner or later, no matter how careful you are, you end up in those unavoidable social situations where you have to mingle with the common folk. People of the kind who haven’t the faintest clue what CISSP, CISM, ISO27001 or PCI DSS stand for.

I mean why is it so difficult to articulate to the common person what we do? There are a gazillion different fields in medicine. You have GP’s, surgeons, specialists, consultants etc… but when asked, they simply reply that they’re a Doctor and all is clear.

So, when I say that I’m an Information Security Specialist best case scenario is their eyes glaze over slightly and they drop the topic swiftly.

Worst case is they start prodding for more information – or start arriving at their own conclusions.

“so you’re a security guard then?” or “You look at rows and rows of CCTV screens all day?”

Errr no grandpa… we aren’t at war with Germany any more. Information is power, it is the ultimate in control. With information we can start wars, save millions of lives, bring about revolutions in 3rd world countries overnight. We can predict the whether, beat the bookies and assume a completely new identity … with the right kind of information.

As Morgan Freeman says in ‘The Dark Knight’ this is far too much power for one man to have.

Hence, Infosec Specialists are out there saving the world… one byte of information at a time.

Unfortunately, if you ever try explaining that whole paragraph to someone, chances are they’ll be in a coma by the time you’ve finished.

So what do I do?

I’m just a consultant…