Purplecon 2019, shahn harris, embracing empathy, https://purplecon.nz/talks/#shahn-harris, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvB8nEVka80&list=PLS45xFo74VF546tbfXXtKDO03cVrAalM6&index=2

empathy is a personality trait which is not often discussed in the world of infosec. in an industry with highly authoritative technical personalities, curious technical explorers and fully transparent decision makers empathy is the odd one out, why care about what other people think or feel when you have the mandate to enforce policy/solutions/architecture/technology as you have funding and “because security”. in this talk i will take you through how in my now near 20-year career predominately in the enterprise space i have tried to be anything but empathetic, the feeling of impostor syndrome i carried around for years as the way i worked and achieved results was not covered by any conference talks/certs/training/industry groups. and how through necessity i went from realizing that while my approach to infosec had always been classed as “pragmatic” it was empathetic. and that empathy worked wonders in the most trying time of my career.