I am a huge believer in “knowledge is key”.  Yeah… I know… just reading that statement you are probably saying “well yeah… duh”.

Of course knowledge is key… duh, Fish!  We know that!  We love knowledge.  We are knowledge seekers and we love to learn!  I mean… if we didn’t love learning and knowledge why would we be reading this?   Okay… got it.  You love knowledge.  You want to grow your knowledge.   I hear you.  You are basically saying… bring on the knowledge… max the setting!   Got it.

So you most likely extend that desire for knowledge to most of the areas in your life.

For Example

• Buying a House:  When buying a house you want the knowledge you can get by hiring a subject matter expert to walk thru the entirety of the house and inspect it.  You want knowledge of the truths of that house.
• Hiring a Financial Advisor: When hiring a financial advisor you just go and “bare all” in reference to your financial situation so they can review every nuance of it.   You want knowledge of the truths of your finances.

Your Turn

Let’s make this interactive!  Time to jot some of your thoughts down.  Think about the 2 examples above and ask yourself the following questions

• Why do you want this knowledge of the real truths of the house… your finances?
• What might you do with the knowledge of the truths discovered?
• Do you feel somehow you are being proactive about the future by gaining these truths today?
• Do you feel you not only “want” to know these truths…. but actually feel like you “need” to know them?
• If you feel you actually really “need” to know them.  Why do you “need” to know them?

• Pretty much everyone said they felt they  “needed to know”  not just “wanted to know”

Why?

1. To make the best decision.
2. To be able to better plan for the future
3. To hopefully plan the best  today to be able to limit or avoid problems in the future

Not exactly rocket science.  In fact kinda boringly simple and kinda self evident, eh?  It is just “logical” to have the knowledge of the varying truths about things.  Yeah… I can hear you “Duh, Fish“…. right?   It’s just logical.

Cool so we are both on the same page with all of this.  Awesome!  Okay… so I need your help understanding something that confuses the heck out of me.

What About Your Network?

In your company do you have knowledge of all the devices accessing your network?  Do you know which devices are talking with which?  Basically I’m asking if you have “knowledge of the truths” in your network?  Truth?  I know your likely answer to this.  I read the other day that –

• 90% of organizations are not “fully aware” of the devices accessing their network

Well that doesn’t seem logical.  What happened to “needing to know” the knowledge of the truths of things so we can

1. make the best decision.
2. be able to better plan for the future
3. hopefully plan the best  today to be able to limit or avoid problems in the future

While I’m tossing out statistics like the “90%” one above.  Let me hit you with a few others.

• By 2020 we are looking at having 21 Billion IoT devices that will be accessing the network.  Do you even know right now, today, who all your IoT devices are communicating with?
• By 2020 80% of all traffic will be encrypted.
• 191 days is the average time to detect a breach.  Yup… that’s  ~6.4 months.
• 66 days is the average time to contain a breach.
• Which means the average time between being breached and containing the breach is ~257 days.  Yup.  ~8.6 months.
• $3.62 Million is the average cost of a data breach.

What can you do?

YOU CAN BE THE CHANGE!  As network engineers we all work for the end customer.  The customer whose packets are passing through our networks.  They rely on us.  They rely on YOU!

BE THE CHANGE!    Make getting the knowledge of the truths in YOUR network a top priority.

It’s just logical after all.