Here's how you can handle stress and pressure when facing network security failures.

Follow the basics... 1. Stay Calm: Take deep breaths to maintain composure. 2. Assess the Situation: Identify the issue quickly and accurately. 3. Prioritize Tasks: Focus on the most critical problems first. 4. Communicate Clearly: Keep your team and stakeholders informed. 5. Follow Protocols: Stick to established incident response procedures. 6. Delegate: Assign tasks to team members based on their expertise. 7. Document Everything: Keep detailed records of actions taken and decisions made.

It's ok to be stressed during a critical moment in your job. Network reliability and Security is a huge deal, and can be a lot if it is your first job as a Network Administrator or Network Security Engineer. The important part is to acknowledge that it is ok to be stressed in this moment, and to work on developing a plan.

A well-documented incident response plan is crucial for handling network security failures. Regularly update and test this plan, train your team, create standard operating procedures, and conduct drills. Maintaining a level head helps make rational decisions, and delegate tasks based on team members' expertise. Taking deep breaths and approaching situations methodically are essential.

What I think is, if you face Network Security Failure, Just keep calm and focused so you can think clearly. Identify the scope and impact of the failure Adhere to the established incident response plan.

In my first year as a Network Engineer, we were gearing up for a major project involving adding about a thousand new user accounts and profiles as we began in processing. Suddenly, nothing works and no one is able to process anything, and it's me who gets the phone call. I quickly had to have an idea what was going on, and prioritized the steps I would need to take to isolate the issue and document what was happening.

Address the most critical issues first to minimize damage. Keep all stakeholders informed with clear, concise updates. Distribute tasks among team members to manage workload effectively.

Once I realized it was a fiber cut on the vendors side of WAN (Wide Area Network), I was able to effectively communicate to my immediate leadership, as well as escalate the issue to the enterprise level for visibility. I was able to reroute some communications to local resources since the LAN (Local Area Network) was not down and able to continue the on-boarding of personnel. Both enterprise and local leadership were informed of the issue while I maintained contact with the vendor and ticket request, and kept leadership updated as needed.

Record all actions taken for post-incident analysis. Keep all the stakeholders informed with the incident. Don't hesitate to ask for help from colleagues or experts if needed

Learning continuously is one of the most important skills you can have in both IT and Cyber Security. No matter how much you know currently, you will still always run into an issue that you either do not know how to handle, or have only learned of but have not handled personally. Up until that vendor's circuit went down, I had not been versed in the process of submitting a ticket for a fiber cut. I had to learn quickly in order to bring visibility to both the enterprise, and vendor, to bring about the quickest resolution to restore site connectivity. I quickly found documentation within our ticket system, found the correct department, looking at network diagrams to include the correct information to the vendor.

After resolving the issue, conduct a post-mortem to identify lessons and improve future responses. Revise your incident response plan based on insights gained from post-mortem analysis. Participate in regular training sessions. Stay updated on emerging threats

Ensure you take breaks and avoid overworking. Prioritise tasks and manage your time effectively to avoid last-minute rushes and reduce stress. Practice mindfulness, meditation or deep-breathing exercises to reduce stress and stay focused

This whole event was on a Saturday morning, I was originally supposed to be the support engineer but two weeks after I started the role the primary engineer resigned. It would be nearly 6 months before we even started interviewing for the position, so I quickly found myself as the primary engineer during a large domain migration. The stress in the first few months was great, but perspective can greatly help reduce stress. I loved what I was doing, and always enjoy learning, so while I was stressed, framing it as a great opportunity helped relieve a lot of the stress. In my out of office hours I enjoy working out, reading and spending time with friends and family. It is important to keep a healthy work life balance