SANS MGT 512: Cyber 42 and Choose Your Own Adventure

What does one have to do with the other?

Well, I am glad you asked.

I am currently enrolled in the ondemand SANS MGT 512. There is leadership simulation game called Cyber 42 for those that are unfamiliar with the course material. During the first day, the instructor introduces the Cyber 42 platform and make an analogy to the Choose Your Own Adventure books.

The reference he makes is in how the ondemand course takers get this unique opportunity to basically do a choose your adventure as many times as you would like. This was something he said he would do as a kid when reading those books. He would start reading but choose to follow many different paths to see the different outcomes.

I heard that and was thinking, that is exactly what I would do as well. I wanted to know all of the possible outcomes to those books, so I would go back and re-read, following new paths all of the time.

I started thinking more about this concept and realized this is something I have continued to do often throughout life. The most easily related example is when I play character development video games. I am notorious for getting to significant decision points of character advancement where I will create a new save before I continue. This provides me the opportunity to come back to that save and make a different decision in order to change the follow on play and outcome of the game.

Then I started to wonder if this is some characteristic that is common in cybersecurity professionals and maybe more so for those who are the curious types who like to hack away at things in general.

For me, hacking has been a way of life, not just with 1s and 0s, but in the physical environment as well. I am constantly thinking about How can I do this differently? How can I change this work? What can I put together to make this work?