Memorial Day is a valuable holiday to reflect on those that have served our Country. As we think about this holiday let’s also consider ways to learn from the past and to put these lessons to use in the future.
In thinking about our military, we can take some valuable lessons on the way our military and soldiers are trained and deployed to protect our country.
When our Countries’ new soldiers start their military service, they attend some form of “boot camp”. Boot camp training can be seven to twelve weeks of intensive training depending on the branch of service. The purpose of this intense training is to provide many skills that most Americans do not have growing up.
How do you train an 18-year-old to run towards gunfire instead of away from it?
This act would seem to defy all logic and clearly goes against all human instinct. Boot camp training provides a form of psychological reprogramming to overcome normal human instinct. Through drills and repetitive training recruits are trained to react in new ways and respond as a team towards the attack.
New military recruits are trained to “act and think as a unit”. This concept is at the heart of teamwork and the concept that if one fails we all fail.
We also train all our law enforcement personnel in the same way. Police officers are trained to run towards gunfire and not away from it. When everyone else is trying to escape the danger, our cops are trained to run toward the shooter.
I spent over thirty years in law enforcement including twenty-two years as a U.S. Secret Service agent and I was often asked how I could “jump in front of a bullet”. One of the reasons is because the Secret Service provided intensive training to create muscle memory. So, the response during an incident becomes an instinct and happens without thinking.
The Secret Service also takes the training a step further and requires intensive ongoing training. This ongoing training last for the length of an agents’ career and depending on the agents’ position may increase to match the job duties.
It goes without saying, that we need to remember all the Americans that have paid the ultimate sacrifice and died for our freedom. We need to thank all that have served our Country in this capacity.
We also need to think about better ways to protect our Country domestically and learn from the lessons of Memorial Day. As our society changes and terrorism throughout the world evolves we can take a clear lesson from our military and the “boot camp” concept.
This is a concept I deal with every day in our business of cyber security awareness training.
If we think about an “active shooter” incident in a workplace, most businesses have no plan and there has been no training. Without training and preparation, the result will be chaos and complete disorder and confusion.
Why do most businesses and organizations run fire drills? We run these training drills to help employees to be prepared in the event of a fire or disaster. In a successful drill, employees understand the risk associated to the incident and how to respond to best reduce the risk.
Let’s look at the recent WannaCry ransomware attack. This became an international incident because businesses were not prepared to deal with the crime. Many businesses clearly did not understand the risk of ransomware and did not have a plan in place. There was no training, and the response was disorder and confusion.
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