Autistic Security Event Monitoring

Wired Magazine recently published a set of articles titled 12 Shocking Ideas That Could Change the World. Among them was a suggestion by a Danish gentleman named Thorkil Sonne, of Specialisterne, to hire autists.  His reasoning is that people with autism or asperger’s are good at routine tasks;

“As a general view, they have excellent memory and strong attention to detail. They are persistent and good at following structures and routines”

So, I got to thinking; one of the discussions I had with colleagues following a recent meeting with a provider of managed security services (see previous post) dealt with the idea that building and maintaining a decent SOC and log/event management procedure is a near-impossible task, due to the difficulty of creating a sustainable operations process; one of my co-workers made the point that most people would tend to get bored with the repetitive nature of looking through logfiles, or even dealing with things like security advisories and updates.

I countered with the assertion that your basic event management and intelligence correlation should, to a large degree, be automated anyway (whether non-dedicated companies can do this as well as, or better than, dedicated outsourcers is a separate discussion that’s probably best investigated on a case-by-case basis.)  However, the routine nature of any IT operations-type job aside, he did have a point that (a) even when you do automate everything, you’ll still want a degree of human second-guessing, and (b) that gets mighty dull.

It seems like a logical conclusion that if Thorkil Sonne is right, and autists (is that a word?) can really be excellent at work that requires focus, consistent attention to detail despite the drudgery involved, and clear rules, why not use these guys for exactly the tasks described above?  Someone who is excellent at pattern detection, and is willing to follow the same process day after day after day would seem to be ideal for an SOC monitoring / log & event analysis position.

I don’t want to come across as somehow insensitive, since I know next to nothing about autism, but purely going by the value proposition put forward by Specialisterne, it seems like a rational conclusion to hire the best people for any given job — whether or not the fact that they are qualified at what they do stems from extraordinary dedication, experience, or a mental condition should be completely irrelevant.  And in the process, maybe do some good for someone who might be difficult to employ otherwise.