thinking and analysis

First off, going to pull what may be a stupid wannabe blogger move and mix in some speculation with a lot of opinion... hopefully it works, if not... let me know.

Analysis... it's interesting, necessary for life and survival... but as natural as it may be on a day to day basis, security analysis is a little different for most of us. Fact of the matter is, there are many facets of life that require thinking or analysis that is more difficult than just regular every day 2nd nature thinking.

Last week I heard in a presentation, well multiple presentations about Security Intelligence and Operations. Organizations around the world are pitched in battle and are faced with challenges that range from hiring analysts to training to fighting the battles they are hired for.

There are many questions that management is asking about analysts, and from the sounds of it they are centered primarily around hiring... One of the constants of Ops is the ever rotating door...

The question I am asking myself is how do we build solid analysts that can link security concepts with tools and open their minds to do awesome analysis, or just quality analysis versus assumption.

Okay, time to stop my mentally meandering and get to the point.

I am going to sit down and read two books, well finish one and consume the other.

'Thinking Fast and Slow' by Daniel Kahneman

And 

'Psychology of Intelligence Analysis' by Richards J. Heuer Jr. [pdf here]

Both of these books have to do with thinking, and I am under the impression that both have something to do with helping us understand when we are acting off of assumptions and when we are doing analysis.

I am going to see if I can find and then illustrate a link between the two writings. My premise for this is based on Thinking and Fast and Slow and the two systems we as humans operate with. Then linking that to Heuer's writing on what I believe is doing analysis and being able to separate the assumption from analysis.

This will take a bit as I have to finish both books.

- Paul