Cloudcook here. I was crammed into seat 21B last week, flying from Copenhagen to Basel - back Home, somewhere between a screaming toddler and an old guy snoring like a bear when it hit me:
Airports and airplanes are the perfect metaphor for your IT security strategy.

No, really.

You’ve got firewalls playing bouncer, security awareness trainings no one listens to, and backups you “think” are working. And just like in air travel, your security hinges on people paying attention for once in their lives. Spoiler: they don’t.

So fasten your seatbelts, stow your unsecured USB sticks, and put your tray tables in the upright position — we’re taking off into Cloudcook Airlines Flight INFOSEC420: Destination - Not Totally Pwned.

💃 Airport Security = Your Perimeter Defense (If You Still Believe in That)

Let’s start at the terminal. You queue up. Get scanned. Maybe someone checks your ID.

  • 🔍 Metal detectors = Firewalls
    Sure, they'll catch someone carrying an old-school .exe. But a base64 PowerShell payload? Enjoy your flight.
  • 🪪 Passport check = Authentication
    Bonus points if you implemented Entra ID and not just "admin / admin123" from 2009.
  • 🎒 Random bag search = Endpoint Detection & Response
    You might catch something suspicious if your EDR isn’t napping.

And then there’s duty-free:
The Wild West of Shadow IT.
“Oh look, a shiny AI note-taker! Let’s install it company-wide without telling IT!”
Congrats, you just imported ransomware with your Toblerone.

💸 Airport Pricing = Your Security Budget (aka Spend More, Secure Less™)

Ever bought a sandwich at an airport?
Yeah — 14 bucks for soggy bread and sadness.
Welcome to security budgeting.

Airports and IT security have a lot in common:

  • 🥪 Everything costs 300% more than it should
  • 🔦 You pay a fortune for fire suppression you'll hopefully never use
  • 📱 There’s Wi-Fi, but it’s garbage and probably being MITM'd
  • 🔐 You’re not sure what you're paying for, but it feels secure?
“This new AI-powered XDR solution costs more than a small jet engine, but it might detect someone browsing shady PDFs.”

And just like airports, security teams are expected to deliver perfection —
24/7 monitoring, zero incidents, and "business enablement"...
With a team of three people, a budget of two paperclips, and a free trial of CrowdStrike that expired last year.

🎤 The Safety Briefing = Security Awareness Training (Ignored by 99.7%)

Every flight starts with the same ritual:
A nice human in polyester stands up front and desperately tries to teach you how to not die.

That’s security awareness.
Mandatory. Ignored.
Crucial — but only when everything catches fire.

“In the event of a breach, oxygen masks will drop from the ceiling.”
Aka: “If you clicked that phishing link, please don’t CC the whole company in your apology.”

Remember that part about locating your nearest exit?
That’s incident response.
But unlike airplanes, most orgs never practice what to do in an emergency.

Because who needs tabletop exercises when you can wing it during the real thing, right?

👨‍✈️ The Pilot = Your CISO (Flying the Plane While Management Keeps Yelling About Fuel Costs)

Let’s give it up for the CISO — the pilot of your corporate security flight.
Responsible for everything from the weather to the fuel gauge, even though most of the budget went into leather seats for Sales.

The CISO's job?

  • ☁️ Fly safely through storms of vulnerabilities and compliance demands
  • 📉 Navigate around turbulence caused by that time Legal signed off on a third-party app with full Graph API access
  • 🎯 Take responsibility when the flight plan was written by someone in Marketing

And just like a pilot:

  • 🛫 Everyone trusts them until something goes wrong
  • 🔇 They're not allowed to say “we're all gonna die” even when things are on fire
  • 💻 They’re expected to land smoothly even if the engines were replaced with Copilot and duct tape
“Why didn’t you see the breach coming?”
Because Franziska from Finance clicked the link faster than Defender could sneeze, Peter.

Most days, the CISO is flying with one eye on the dashboard and the other on the CFO slowly slashing the security budget mid-flight.

👨‍🛫 Flight Crew = IT Admins

Let’s be real:
Your admins are the exhausted flight crew holding the whole show together.

  • Calm on the outside, dead inside.
  • Fixing things mid-air while smiling at clueless passengers (users).
  • Sometimes forced to use tools older than the plane itself (hello, legacy VPN).

They’re also the ones who actually know where the damn fire extinguisher is when the CEO opens a malicious Excel file titled "Q3_Bonus_Spreadsheet.xlsm".

🧩 Life Vests = Backups (You Brought One… Right?)

Every plane has life vests.
Every company says they have backups.
But when you're going down fast, you'd better hope it’s not one of those "conceptual backups" stored on some intern’s USB stick from 2019.

Let’s break it down:

  • 🧼 “Under your seat” = Probably not where your backups actually are
  • 💦 Water activated = You only find out if it works after the disaster hits
  • 🧪 Tested monthly? Or just part of the compliance checkbox Olympics?
  • ❌ Inflates when already underwater = not helpful

And let’s be real:
If your backups are hot, online, and on the same domain as prod — congrats, you just put your life vest in the fire.

You’re not “secure” until that thing inflates outside of the ransomware blast radius.

💡 Bonus tip: If your DR plan involves hoping the cloud provider has a backup… you’re gonna need more than a whistle and a glow stick.

🕵️ The Air Marshal = Threat Hunter

You don’t see them, but they’re there.

They notice the shady-looking guy in 22D pulling out Mimikatz before he even finishes his orange juice.

They’re your threat hunters — scanning logs, correlating behavior, watching your environment like it’s the last season of Mr. Robot.

And if you don’t have one?
You’re flying blind, my friend.

⛈️ Cloud Turbulence = Shared Responsibility Hell

Flying Azure, AWS, or GCP? Cool.
That just means:

  • They own the plane.
  • You still have to pack your own damn bags (and encrypt them).
  • If something gets stolen, guess who’s responsible?

That’s right: not Satya.

Cloud security means being prepared for turbulence — misconfigured Storage Containers, public blobs, OAuth token abuse… the works.

🛬 Final Approach: Landing Securely

Security isn’t about being “done.”
It’s about making sure your landing gear isn’t made of duct tape and denial.

You need:

  • ✅ Trained users (passengers who know not to open .xls files)
  • ✅ Monitored systems (flight telemetry)
  • ✅ Practiced incident response (emergency landing drills)
  • ✅ Real backups (life vests that aren’t metaphorical)

And most of all, you need to stop pretending you’re flying a secure airline when you’re really running “HackJet 3000.”

👨‍🍳 Final Thoughts from Cloudcook (a.k.a. Your In-Flight Security Chef)

Let’s face it:
Running IT security is like running an airline — constant pressure, outdated tech, and a whole lotta people just praying nothing crashes.

But if you run it right?
You can spot threats before they board, handle turbulence without panicking, and maybe, just maybe, land without total catastrophe.

Until then:
Buckle up, patch your systems, and don't forget to brief the passengers.

Fly safe — or at least safer than your last pen test suggested.