In this video, you will learn to describe why the rapidly changing technology and tools of cybersecurity make critical thinking skills essential. Describe the critical thinking model as the intersection of critical thinking characteristics, technical skills, interpersonal skills, theoretical and experimental knowledge and intellectual skills. >> I like to start off with a thought experiment to kind of show spotlight or what I mean by critical thinking. So this thought experiment, pretend that you are an office manager in a high-rise building downtown and you've got multiple tenants. You've got retail, apartments, office space, and you've been getting a lot of complaints that the elevators are slow. You're getting emails, you're getting phone calls, people are upset. The elevators are too slow and they're threatening to break their lease. You don't want that, you don't want people to break their leases. So what do you do, how do you solve this problem? Now, there's a number of different approaches. You could replace the lift. You could take a software approach and update the lift algorithm. You could tell them to take the stairs, you could install more elevators, you could do nothing. There's number of different approaches and solutions to this problem. And I want you to be thinking about this over the course of this discussion, over the course of this presentation because we're going to come back to it. But think about how you would solve this problem and think about how you came to that conclusion. And then again, we'll come back to that at the end of this discussion. So with that, let's get into it now. When we think about skills, the sought-after skills in cyber security, media we go to the technical skills now. These are, I did an informal survey of some big tech companies, what they were hiring for in cybersecurity. And I looked at IBM, and I looked at Microsoft, Facebook, Google. The big tech companies, I saw a lot of, what really jumped out at me were these technical job skills. So operating [INAUDIBLE] instrusion detection, reverse engineering, all very important. With that comes a slew of supporting tools to help support these activities. So whether that's Wireshark or Spelunk or a number of different database tools help support these activities. Now, you've got a conundrum where you've got hundreds and hundreds of tools that are updated regularly. Everybody's got a favorite, they have got different data formats, they don't always play nice. This can be messy to deal with and it can also be impossible to keep up with. It's impossible to become proficient in all these tools. And so, this is what I mean when I say there's common misconception of keeping up with the latest technical tools and trends is the key to success. But the reality is that they are always going to be changing. The technology is constantly changing, our average terrain is always changing. But the good news is that the security and design fundamentals change slowly. TCP IP operating systems, kernel fundamentals, those change slowly. And so critical thinking, combining these critical thinking skills with an understanding of security fundamentals will allow us to identify solutions to unknown, undefined complex problems situations regardless of technology, regardless of the tool that we have in front of us. So, I just more you know, thinking about critical thinking and I was wondering you what, what differentiates a good critical thinker from a not so good critical thinker. What are the characteristics that enable critical thinking? And I did some research. I really couldn't find anything that was specific to cybersecurity, but where this has been studied a lot is in healthcare. So if you think about healthcare, you think about an emergency room. You've got doctors and nurses who are in a high stress situation. They have to make sometimes lifesaving decisions in just a matter of minutes, just based on incomplete data, and so the ability to think critically, to pull together decision, intelligent decision in that short amount of time is very important. And so critical thinking has been studied a lot in this field and so this model on the slide is actually pulled from a healthcare text book. I really like this model and I think these same principles still apply to cyber security and so I'll just briefly walk us through each of these characteristics. So at the top, in that top circle, are your critical thinking characteristics. Your attitudes and behaviors at a person. This is your personality, your outlook on the world. How you approach problems. It's going to be a product of your upbringing, your life experiences, your job experiences. It's going to be different for each of us, and that's good. That's good, because this is a field where we want that diversity. We want that diversity of perception. If there's one thing that I've seen in my career that I've seen in cybersecurity in particular is that the most successful people are often the most curious. They're the most curious of the world, they've got a constant hunger to keep learning, to keep growing, to solve problems. If they're on a threat hunt or they're doing some kind of investigative work, they've got this intrinsic desire to get to the answer to finish to find a solution. And so just that, that curiosity will take you far. Going clockwise, the next characteristic is your theoretical and experiential knowledge there. Now this is like the fundamental knowledge that you pick up. Maybe in school about how operating systems work. Your knowledge that comes from on the job with different projects that you've been on, what you've learned from those projects. Your intellectual skills, that's what that circle represents. Moving on to your interpersonal self. How well do you interact with other people? To what degree are you interacting with your coworkers, with your peers? Are you asking questions? Are you offering your own input? Because cyber security is not a solo profession. I rely on my colleagues every single day whether we're sharing information or I've got questions or need help. I'm relying on other researchers that are out within the company that are external to IBM maybe that are in a different domain. So how well can you work together with others and share information? And then then last is the technical skills and competencies. So these are you know, your ability to use wire shark your ability to triage maybe sure. These are the technical skills and competencies that were outlined on that skill slide [INAUDIBLE] reverse engineering, that's what these skills are. And in this model, their overlaps represents a person's critical thinking ability.
