Sometimes, our motivation to “just get things done” can cause us to make poor decisions. We overrule the voice in our heads that says, “Hold up a sec. Is this what we should be doing right now?” That voice is often the sound of our subconscious, which may have spotted warning signs that our conscious mind is either unaware of or has dismissed. We can save ourselves some unnecessary grief if we pause for a minute and ask – “Why am I feeling doubt about this?”

The ex-Navy Seal and now author and podcaster Jocko Willink provided an excellent example of a situation where stepping back and detaching allowed him to see a path to better outcomes. He was a newly minted Seal, training in Close Quarters Combat, working through an exercise with his squad. Instructors had created a situation where the only apparent way to progress through a house was down a narrow, bottlenecked corridor where the defenders had set up an ambush. Direct assault would result in mass casualties for the assaulting team. Instructors behind the squad yelled continuously, ordering them to proceed down the corridor to clear the house. An initial attack by the assault team resulted in (simulated) casualties. At this point, Jocko realised he could step out of line, raise his weapon into the port arms position and consider alternatives. The pressure being put on by instructors from behind and casualties in front was put to one side while he thought about other avenues of approach. By looking around, he discovered that there was an external staircase that could be used to circumvent the ambush and assault the position from the rear. Jocko used this lesson repeatedly throughout his military career and teaches it to leaders in all fields – an approach he describes as “detach and broaden your field of view”.

While this example seems heavily militarily oriented, it applies to everyday life. By pausing, stepping back, and assessing our goals in any situation, we can choose better paths than the one we’re currently on. Taking a pause allows us to broaden our actual and psychological field of view (which narrows when we’re under stress) and also ask questions. We can ask ourselves, “What do I need to achieve from this conversation?”; “What would this look like if it was easier?”; “Why do I believe this is the right route to get where I want to go?”. We can also ask others for their advice. We can take a minute (or an hour or a day) to seek out those who may have gone through similar challenges and get their input. This kind of pause is crucial in high-stress situations, whether that stress is externally or internally generated. Cortisol doesn’t always help us make good decisions – it reduces the world to fight or flight, when sometimes what we need to do is take a much more nuanced approach.

In the “get things done” organisations that many of us operate in today, it is often more important to stop and ask, “Is this necessary?” or “Is this the right thing to do now?” We are always trying to make progress without taking the time to consider whether we are progressing in the right way or even the right direction. To layer in another analogy, a senior executive who interviewed me for my current role put it like this – “in a warehouse full of barrels of fish, it’s important to know which barrel you should be fishing in”.

Listen to your gut. If in doubt, put down the shovel. Take a pause. Detach from the problem. Then, pick up your shovel again. By being more thoughtful and unafraid to pause, we will deliver better outcomes for ourselves and the people and companies we support.

Developing mental resilience is a practice. It requires challenges to struggle against, and, like athletic practice, it is helpful to rest between times of stress. Life doesn’t always offer us this rest. I have found it helpful to treat each challenge or issue as its own thing. When I was younger, I was lucky enough to have a pair of uncles who taught me that even small things can feel overwhelming if we bundle them together in our minds. I learned the lesson of breaking things into separate challenges to make them more manageable.

During his reign as emperor, Marcus Aurelius dealt with plague, treason, war and the loss of as many as 9 of his children. He struggled with poor health for most of his life before succumbing to an infection at the age of 58. His son and heir, Commodus, was clearly not the successor Marcus would have wished for (in fact, his solo reign may have led to the end of an era of peace and prosperity in the Roman Empire.) And yet, Marcus repeatedly admonished himself in his “Meditations” to focus just on the present moment and not be troubled by things outside of his control. He also reminded himself “Nothing that happens is unusual or unnatural, and there’s no sense in complaining. Nature does not make us endure the unendurable.” If life sometimes seems unfair and unrelenting, it is temporary and complaining will not improve the situation.

Bridgewater CEO and author of “Principles of Life and Work”, Ray Dalio, advises confronting our problems head-on. “The more difficult the problem, the more important it is that you stare at it and deal with it.” He also advocates for identifying new challenges as examples of previously met ones – which can help reframe a setback or loss.

Marcus and other stoics remind us to note the things in our control and take action on them. By making progress in even one small area or addressing one issue out of many, we can regain some semblance of control when all seems to be conspiring against us.

Finally, it is worth remembering that our emotions are not facts, and we can control our emotions even at very difficult times. As Marcus put it, “When jarred unavoidably by circumstance, revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better grasp of the harmony of you keep on going back to it.”

Next time it seems to you that life is handing you an unrelenting series of shit sandwiches, try to remember that the events (and life itself) are temporary. We will move out of the period of struggle, and will be better able to respond while in it if we remember to act on those things we can control. We can also remember that our emotions need not drive us – we can decide how we react to life’s challenges. Repeatedly practising intentional responses will make a calmer demeanour easier to maintain, even in very trying circumstances. While very few of us are ever likely to deal with the level of challenge that Marcus dealt with, we share a common humanity with those who went before us. We can leverage the lessons of our predecessors to make our present more palatable.

A few people have asked me recently, “When do I know it’s time to make a change?” In this post, I propose some criteria that I hope you will find relevant.

The context of the question above usually relates to role change. Typically, when someone asks me this question, it is because they have identified reasons to consider new roles and are trying to confirm or challenge their thought processes.

Several drivers show up in these discussions, which I like to frame as questions:

• Am I still learning and growing?
• Do I feel fulfilled by my work?
• Is my work considered valuable by key stakeholders?
• Do I think I’m being fairly compensated?
• Is there a next step or trajectory to this role?

Growth typically requires a level of challenge in the role – we learn most effectively when we are uncomfortable. The corollary to this is that staying in “the velvet rut” of the known and comfortable leads to stagnation and a lack of growth. A quote I like on the subject of change is attributed to John C. Maxwell: “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.” We are going to be constantly subjected to change – environmental, organisational, personal – and it is up to us to determine whether we learn and develop from it.

One of the major reasons that people look to change roles (apart from having unsupportive or difficult managers) is reward and recognition. People can get hung up on monetary elements when it comes to compensation without considering other aspects. For example, am I being given new growth opportunities as a result of my delivery? Is my work getting publicised? Am I given the chance to be seen as a subject matter expert in my field?

We all have different criteria for what constitutes fair compensation. While the monetary aspect is key (very few of us turn up to work for the camraderie and challenge alone) it is not the only way to be rewarded for doing our jobs well.

I use a Pareto principle calculation to help people categorise the type of work in their current role. Am I spending 80% of my time on things that matter to me and others and that have value? If 20% of my time is spent on administrative work and noise, that’s probably okay. If the percentage grows closer to 50%, that probably indicates that a change (either within or outside the organisation) is required.

I have made a significant number of changes in my career and continue to do so, with an eye to continuing growth and challenge. Sometimes this works out, and the timing is right, personally and professionally, and sometimes it doesn’t. Each time I learn from the experience, and each time I refine and improve my criteria for when role change is necessary for me. One additional criterion that can be useful for you to consider is “What is my tolerance for risk at this stage of my life?” Younger people or those without attachments may have have higher risk tolerance because they don’t have dependents. For those of us with families to support and possibly aging parents as well, our risk appetite may be lower. Either way, it is important to consider if your current role is providing you the right answers to the questions above, and to other criteria that may be relevant to you.

As a final note, I came across a quote recently that made me smile – “You are not a tree. If you don’t like where you are, move.” It is important for all of us to remember that our constraints are often less restrictive than we think!

When I was young, stress was invariably considered a bad thing. It was thought that there was one stress category, which was all negative. Neuroscience and management thinking have moved forward in the intervening epochs, and there is a recognition that human beings need stress to be engaged and to grow.

Mihayli Csikszentmihalyi, the Hungarian psychologist, introduced the concept of Flow. We are in a flow state when deeply engaged with our work. Time passes without our noticing, and the work feels effortless and productive. Flow state is achieved when we can work without distraction and the work is sufficiently taxing to require our full attention.

Developers enter a flow state when coding without stopping for food, bathroom breaks or distractions. Writers constantly seek to enter a flow state to generate high-quality, volume output. We can enter a flow state when working on a new problem or while standing in a river fly fishing (literally being in the flow). To enter a flow state, we also have to be in a state of stress, in this case, called eustress.

Eustress is the state in which we grow and learn fastest. We may feel uncomfortable, like when starting a new job, but not to the point of damaging stress levels. I have learned the most when I’ve been in this state of “not-knowing” discomfort.

Too little stress can be damaging in its own way, particularly if we are used to operating at a certain level of everyday stress. If we have too little stress in our work lives, we may engage in damaging behaviours, spending time doom-scrolling social media or Internet sites. Our motivation suffers, and it can seem pointless to engage with anything. A continuation of this state can lead to a lack of a sense of purpose, which can be very bad for our mental health. Humans need focus and purpose, or we become anxious and perhaps even depressed.

One aspect I have noticed of moving from a high-stress to a low-stress condition over time is that I am more likely to get sick once cortisol levels drop. Several theories address why this may occur, but cortisol suppresses the immune system in persistent high-stress situations. When the stressors are removed, the body switches back to a higher immune response, which may cause pathogens that gained a foothold during the suppressed state to cause an immune reaction. This then leads us to feel sick. Research has shown that persistent, chronic stress can lead to hypertension, heart disease and diabetes, among other serious health issues.

Acute stress can also impact immune response. This tends to be temporary and does not always result in illness.

The key from the above is that maintaining a state of eustress is desirable, and we need to be aware of when we are either under-stressed or over-stressed. Persistent states of stress imbalance can have severe mental and physical health conditions associated with them. The only way to know what our eustress levels look like is to seek out the right challenges for us and know when to disengage from work (or leisure) and when to recharge or re-engage.

In short, go ahead, stress yourself!

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly.

Given Marcus’ other writings, this seems like a harsh judgement of his fellow men. Marcus, like other Stoics, believed in reserving harshness for himself. He also believed in being unsurprised by people behaving according to their nature. So, how should we deal with the ungrateful in our lives?

A completely different quote came to mind when I was thinking about this. I studied King Lear in school, and like many of Shakespeare’s works, it has many “quotable” quotes. The relevant one is “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.” As the father of teenage daughters, I can empathise with this one, although none of them have yet accused me of outright senility. It can seem that no matter what we do as parents, our children have already moved on to the next thing they want or need without acknowledging our efforts.

As we go about our day, we may hold doors for others or let them into traffic ahead of us, only for the gesture or effort to go unacknowledged. At work, we may help a colleague with a project or go out of our way to support a leader with a problem they have. We may not receive what we consider to be the appropriate recognition for this or none at all. People can seem happy to benefit from the fruits of our labours without giving us credit for them.

All of this can feel heartily unfair and lead to us being less likely to offer this kind of assistance in the future. We could become bitter and determined only to do what benefits us directly. But there is something to consider beyond our hurt feelings.

As with many quotes taken out of context, the one I started this post with continues with additional language that shifts its focus and clarifies where Marcus is coming from. Marcus reminds himself that he knows the difference between good and evil, that the other person is his “brother in nature”, and that he must remember how to work with them. A common theme in Marcus’ writing is that we can and must choose how we deal with challenging events and people.

In addition, it is often our ego that causes us to want recognition for doing good deeds for others. Marcus reminds himself, and by extension, we as his readers, that we are insignificant in the overall scheme of things (and remember, he was a Roman emperor). Therefore, our ego is ridiculous in assuming we deserve admiration or recognition.

He exhorts himself to do the right thing and remember that doing good should be its own reward.

Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter. Cold or warm. Tired or well-rested. Despised or honoured.

For us, too, we must remember to be grateful for all we have and not become someone who fails to recognise the good deeds done for us by others. Because while a good deed should be its own reward, our social brain craves recognition and seeks to belong. So, regardless of ingratitude (or sometimes ignorance) on the part of our fellows, we can choose to be grateful. Life is too short to be otherwise.

Neuroscience-based coaching, which I practice, teaches us that every brain is different. We have the same basic structures, but our experiences shape the physical structures of our brains over time. What we focus on shapes our brains. For example, studies on London taxi drivers showed their hippocampus grew substantially due to learning “the knowledge”. Our brains establish and strengthen connections based on what we consciously or unconsciously place a value on.

We all operate, in addition, with a set of filters and biases which help us make sense of the world quickly. Our brains are expensive to run, so we use these forms of biological shorthand to lessen the cost. If we don’t have to engage “system 2” thinking per Daniel Kahneman, we can save resources. Cognitively demanding thinking is more expensive from a glucose and oxygen perspective.

The result is that we often accept the world as it appears to us. We believe that our perception of reality is reality. This is known as “naive realism”. This is an easy mistake to make – we are primarily visual and have learned to accept the evidence of our eyes and other senses. If we take that visual reality to start, mine will always differ from yours. Depending on my age and optical quality, I may see more or less detail in the world than you. Does that make my visual reality different to yours? Absolutely. Throw in something like red/green colour blindness, and suddenly, my perception of reality is very different to someone without that visual challenge.

Perception is the core of our reality. What I perceive and what you do can be entirely different based on our position in a room, our experiences, our height, gender, and attitudes to life. I may witness precisely the same thing you do, but my experience of that event and my memory of it may be totally different. We do not make good crime scene witnesses as a result. The car was blue, or maybe red. The man was tall, fat or perhaps a powerfully built woman.

Why does this all matter? Because when someone has a different viewpoint from us, it is entirely possible that what they perceive or recall is more accurate (or at least just as valid) than our viewpoint. In addition, the introduction of “realistic” AI-generated imagery or textual output can be sufficient to fool our senses. We must question our perceptions of the world and understand that reality is not a fixed concept – it is fluid, contextual and personal. Some things are objectively real, but even determining those can be challenging. Using the philosophical thought experiment that we may exist in a simulation or one universe of a multiverse of parallel universes should be sufficient to raise questions about our macro-reality.

Being willing to question ourselves and to openly question others to determine why they believe certain things can be helpful for us to ground ourselves. It can also help us develop more diverse ways of thinking about our challenges. And it can help us avoid becoming stuck in believing that our ideas are the best ones and allow us to understand that what we “know” is largely illusory.

What do procrastination and busyness have to do with each other? How can you procrastinate if you’re doing work? Marcus Aurelius put it this way in Meditations – “Ask yourself at every moment – is this necessary?”. I recently spoke with a coaching client who told me he sometimes loses entire mornings “researching” things for his business. He goes on ChatGPT binges or designs a logo using Dall-E. Later, he realises he hasn’t done the one crucial thing for the day. Tim Urban refers to this as the dark playground – doing things we enjoy but not being able to truly enjoy them because we’re not doing what we should be doing at that time.

It’s easy to become busy. In the corporate world, especially in middle management and above, we can become driven by our calendars, which are often not entirely in our control. A day spent in meetings will feel busy (and cognitively challenging) but is often not very productive.

If we follow our calendars blindly, we can lose entire weeks where all we do is attend meetings and not get any real work done. If we don’t understand our priority (yes, singular) for the day or the week, it will not be attended to. So we have to start with the priority for the day and do that work first. We have to avoid “the tyranny of the urgent.” Instead, mimicking Eisenhower’s matrix, we must understand the benefits of focusing our efforts on things that matter.

Doing the easier things first is a form of procrastination. Reading emails at the start of the day, instead of tackling the one big task that needs to be done, can give the impression of progress. In reality, it is just using time that could be better deployed on the more challenging problems. It invariably also impacts our ability to think clearly and focus. Email is generally just a collection of other people’s priorities delivered to us without prioritisation. Clearing out our mailbox will feel like we’re being productive, but it’s not moving our goals forward.

We must clearly understand our goals to avoid having our days consumed with other people’s priorities. This is the basis of coaching – helping people articulate what it is they want to achieve and then helping them get there. Once we’re clear on what we want to achieve, making those few items the focus of our time is much easier. We put the big rocks in the bottom of the jar before we try to add the pebbles and sand.

Understanding that we decide how we prioritise our time, even if we don’t dictate our schedule or our deliverables, can give us a sense of freedom. Being focused on what matters and making progress on those things over time reduces the sense of overwhelm, of being constantly “busy”. And replacing the list of “priorities” with the priority – “what’s important now (WIN)” for each period in the day can give us clarity on how to proceed.

Don’t be busy. Be productive.

I’m reading (not coincidentally) Dr Matthew Walker’s book “Why We Sleep.” I came across Matt’s work after listening to a conversation between Jocko Willink and Dr Kirk (Doc) Parsley, another sleep specialist, although from a different background to that of Dr Walker.

Matt Walker’s book is an eye-opener. I wish I had read it ten years ago. I wish I had known more about the importance of sleep twenty years ago. Walker comprehensively lays out the various biological processes that rely on sleep and how extremely detrimental chronic short sleep is on the body and the mind.

In my coaching practice, one of the conversations I have at the beginning of engagements is asking how my new coachee is sleeping. Having read Matt Walker’s book and listened to him on the Tim Ferriss podcast, I now have a decent neuro-biological reason for zooming in on that topic.

Most of us know the feeling of brain fog that settles in the day after a night of broken sleep. In Walker’s research and that of other neuroscientists, it becomes clear that this cognitive deficit is not imaginary. The ability to function rationally declines additively over nights of serial short sleep. In this case, short sleep is anything less than 7-8 hours per night. With just 7 hours per night, after ten nights, you are as negatively impacted as if you had stayed up for 24 hours straight. In other words, by the eleventh day, you are as cognitively impaired as if you have drunk enough alcohol to exceed the legal driving limit in most Western countries.

Sleep is a protective mechanism against the byproducts of neurological activity in the brain. These byproducts include tao and beta-amyloid proteins implicated in Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Every night, in non-REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, the brain runs a clean-up process called the glymphatic cycle to clean out the detritus. Studies have shown that just one (!) night of limited or broken sleep increases these proteins in the brain.

On a more fundamental level, sleep enables us to transfer memories successfully from the hippocampus to long-term memory structures in the brain. Numerous elegant studies referenced in the book show the impact on retention of learning from losing just a couple of hours of sleep per night. And the loss is immediate, and you can’t make it up after by “catch-up sleeping”. So if you don’t sleep after learning new information, you are very unlikely to be able to retain it efficiently.

From the point of view of our interactions with others, we are far more likely to be emotionally reactive due to lack of sleep. Our ability to regulate our emotions declines significantly; we’ve all experienced being grumpy due to lack of sleep. In addition, we’re more likely to gain weight because the hormones that regulate appetite (leptin and ghrelin) are also messed up. Consequently, research has shown we’re attracted to foods high in fat, salt and carbohydrates and that we eat more of them (typically 300+ calories more than on a day following a good sleep).

If the above wasn’t enough, lack of sleep has been shown to increase the inflammatory response in the body – the day after a night of limited or no sleep, we tend to run on cortisol. This has been shown to increase the risk of certain cancers over time – the International Agency for Research on Cancer has labelled night shift work as “probably carcinogenic”. Short sleep also negatively impacts the gut biome leading to higher rates of depression and various digestive disorders. A lack of sleep has also been shown to increase the risk of heart attack and strokes.

As someone who serially short-changed my sleep cycle at various points in my life (sometimes unavoidably due to having children, sometimes by choice because of work or leisure), I am genuinely wondering how much of the physical damage I carry around is a result of poor sleep practices.

This year, I’ve made a determined effort to correct that in my life, and I prioritise being in bed for at least 7.5 hours per night. I usually don’t sleep that long, but it’s better than the 5.5 hours I often got in the past. I don’t know how much of an impact this change will have, but having read Matthew Walker’s book and listened to him, Andrew Huberman, Doc Parsley and others discuss sleep from a scientific perspective, I believe it will be a very positive one. I strongly recommend you take the time to sleep because it might save or extend your life and health span. And read Matt’s book – it will hopefully change your mind about sleep.

What does it mean to be intentional? It starts with being present, which can be challenging at the best of times but is essential when things go sideways. It is easy for us to think about something that has yet to happen while dealing with something that is going on now. For example, instead of focusing on my writing, I could be thinking about a bill I have to pay (I may or may not be doing that now). Or, I could be conducting someone’s year-end review with them and start thinking about the next one I have to do; short-changing both the person whose review I am conducting and letting myself down.

Intentionality also has elements of prioritisation about it. According to Greg McKeown, until the 1900s, the word “priority” was singular – which makes a lot of sense when you think about the root of the word. Priority came into use in English in the 1400s, originating from the Latin word “prior”, meaning first. It was only in the 1900s that the term priority became plural, and it doesn’t make sense to me to have multiple priorities. There is only one. I recently came across a lovely little acronym describing this – “WIN” or “What’s Important Now” – neatly reflecting a singular priority. The critical thing about focusing on a single priority is that we have to deliberately decide not to do something else. Not to be distracted or attempt to multitask. Not to be thinking about what we “should” also be doing while working on that one priority. Marcus Aurelius puts it like this in Meditations – “Ask yourself at every moment – ‘Is this necessary?'”

When it comes to decision-making, being transparent and honest with ourselves about why we’re making a decision and then accepting the consequences of it are a part of the puzzle as well. Not making a definitive decision is a decision itself and should also be intentional.

We need to be deliberate about how we consume information. Napoleon provides an interesting example in a world of overwhelming information. He instructed his secretary not to open his mail until three weeks after it had been delivered. By then, many of the supposedly urgent problems within had resolved themselves. I’ve seen this approach put to good effect in my career – one of my peers, who is far less reactive than I am, consistently spent less energy on problems which ultimately resolved themselves because he was willing to wait. By contrast, I often felt the need to react immediately to the presented issue and wasted energy doing it.

As with many other areas of our lives, intentionality requires practice. We must be aware of when we mindlessly consume information or react rather than think. We need to acknowledge to ourselves when our responses are emotional rather than intentional. As a parent, I’ve made my most memorable mistakes when I’ve reacted rather than being present and intentional. And, by communicating our intent to others, we can make it clear why we’re doing what we’re doing (and maybe not doing something else). This clarity in our thinking and action, driven by intent, makes it more likely that we will fulfil the stated purpose of our lives.

I sometimes have conversations with people who don’t know me well and think I’m nice (or even “too nice”). Depending on the nature of the conversation, I may correct them. I intend to be kind, which appears as niceness but is fundamentally different. People sometimes draw a false equivalence between the attributes of kindness and those of niceness. Someone can be kind but not particularly nice. As I’ve written elsewhere, it can be kind to give someone extremely blunt feedback, but it may not feel nice to the person receiving it. Similarly, something that is simple, or made up of simple components, is not necessarily easy. For example, the idea of climbing a mountain is simple to comprehend but potentially very challenging to execute.

What do I mean when I say Cloud Security is simple? The principles that drive Cloud Security are really straightforward. First, have a good governance structure. Ensure that your identity and access management practices are based on least privilege and maintain that stance. Ensure visibility everywhere in your environment. Put appropriate controls in place to segment your Cloud platform so that a compromise in one area is contained. Deploy technology using patterns and maintain your configurations through constant checking and automation. Detect unusual events quickly and provide actionable information to critical stakeholders promptly. Automate heavily. These are simple concepts, even for non-technologists.

However, the execution of Cloud Security at scale is anything but easy. Let’s take the area of entitlements, for example. Maintaining a consistent view of all of the entitlements held by every human and machine identity at scale is incredibly challenging. While the emerging product field of Cloud Identity and Entitlements Management (CIEM) intends to tackle this challenge, the solutions and market are immature. Microsoft’s recent acquisition of CloudKnox, now rebranded as part of the Entra product family, is a case in point. Entra is an interesting product providing information on Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) entitlements for Azure and other Cloud environments. Still, it does not yet give a view of Azure Active Directory entitlements. The combination of roles and entitlements between Azure AD and Azure RBAC is a critical view to have to identify potentially undesirable (toxic) combinations.

Without appropriately mature tooling, it is practically impossible for any Cloud Operations or Cloud Security Operations team to understand all entitlements held by any single identity or security principal. Given the number of breaches caused or facilitated by overprivileged credentials, this area desperately needs improved capability.

So Cloud Security is not easy, even if it is conceptually simple. An analogy struck me relating to DNA. The four bases that form DNA are relatively simple components. However, combined in an incredibly variable manner, they can create hugely complex organisms, ranging from a blue whale to a human to a fruit fly. Similarly, the variability of the underlying services in a Cloud environment and their combinations make securing Cloud solutions at scale incredibly challenging. Simple components build towards extremely complex “organic” ecosystems. As the line between IaaS and PaaS solutions becomes ever more blurred, the combinations increase in variability and complexity.

In a DNA-driven world, how the bases combine is governed by straightforward principles—Adenine pairs with Thymine, and Cytosine pairs with Guanine. During DNA replication, enzymes check to ensure that the correct bases have been added to the chain. If there are errors, they are removed at the source before the DNA is “written”.

In Cloud Security, we can keep our organisations focussed on the simple principles that will help us manage complexity at scale. From a practical perspective, we can ensure that we build environments using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) which is version controlled. We can wrap IaC templates with Policy as Code pre-deployment checks. We can validate from a post-deployment perspective that what we intended to build is actually running using posture management and workload protection tools. And we can continue to educate our broader organisations that what appears simple is not easy. The lure of the Cloud is powerful, and the concepts of it are simple. However, the reality of how to get there safely is highly complex and requires the appropriate preparation, training and tooling to avoid disaster.