There aren’t many second chances in the security industry. If you fail on the job, there's a good chance that you won't work again.

At best, this creates the conditions where everyone is on their A-game all the time but the flip is a high-pressure environment where mistakes and the likelihood of failure are more prone.

Given the high stakes, shouldn’t we be more invested in preparing for the career-threatening situations that we may encounter?

This week we're talking to Nick Drage, a professional wargamer, about whether this is a viable way to increase professionalism and better predict successful outcomes to unknown scenarios.

In this episode, we’ll be discussing…

• What problem is war gaming trying to solve?
• How can we create the ‘safe to fail conditions’ that make for the best learning outcomes?
• How to implement war gaming on your team and overcome objections such as ‘it seeming to be too rigid and military’.
• How to group participants for more effective results.

More about Nick:

My industries are Cyber Security Strategy, and wargaming in its many forms. Outside of directly relevant work, my interests are many, but most relevant to listeners is my interest in strategic insights that work across disciplines or contexts

Work: I work with organisations on Cyber Security Strategy and immersive exercises, with occasional forays into Adversarial Analysis or Adversary Emulation positions. That's very much freelance/on-demand work

Quick Bio: BA(Hons) in Combined Studies, followed by a career in internet technologies and cyber security. I tend to gain work through personal referrals, so customers provide better descriptions than my marketing, my favourite customer description of the services I provide is "external security brain".

Path Dependence

More about the Circuit 

The Circuit Magazine is written and produced by volunteers, most of who are operationally active, working full time in the security industry. The magazine is a product of their combined passion and desire to give something back to the industry. By subscribing to the magazine you are helping to keep it going into the future. Find out more >

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The Circuit team is:

• Elijah Shaw
• Jon Moss
• Shaun West
• Phelim Rowe

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