Unplug your way to better code

Cybersecurity concepts — logs, packets, DNS exfiltration, and more — are usually intangible, and its practitioners are prone to mental fatigue, Amy takes a second to yell at you to go touch grass.

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Hey, you. Yeah, you! The person endlessly scrolling or typing away at their computer. Did you touch grass today? It's just an expression, but if nature’s your thing, that works just fine. What I do mean is that due to the nature of the field, cybersecurity is incredibly intangible. You can’t reach out and touch your logs, or the packets traversing your network, or the concept of DNS exfiltration... and if you tried, you’d just feel the smooth surface of your computer screen. (What a boring texture.

) Spending all our time in the abstract can create some serious mental fatigue. My point is that there’s something powerful to be said about engaging with the physical world. When we engage in a tactile hobby, we give our brains a hard reset.