06/23/2024
We Are All Sheepdogs!
Jeff Cooper, a US Marine, codified a set of color codes to indicate someone’s state of mind while operating in the world. His color codes were widely adopted both in the military and law enforcement world, as well as in the cybersecurity profession.
His codes described four states of mind and alertness, as shown in the graphic below. These levels of awareness certainly apply to personal security but also perfectly map to cybersecurity.
If you are in condition White, you’re totally unaware. You are busy on your cell phone - you have very little alerting or monitoring of potential threats and attacks on your network.
Condition Yellow means you’re watching what needs to be watched and ready for any alerts that might come in.
Once you get an alert, you go into condition Orange - there is a potential threat. You start to investigate, and you engage your Incident Response Plan if the attack is likely.
If you have clearly identified that you ARE under attack, you go into condition Red. The fight is on. You fully engage all resources, plans, and techniques to combat, isolate, and stop that attack. That mindset means all your faculties are focused on stopping that threat so you can recover from it.
