CyberSecurity is a never-ending game of Whack-a-Mole

I searched for the right Whack-a-Mole image so I could use the game as an analogy for life in CyberSecurity,, and realized there is none to define the challenge of someone in the CyberSecurity field. The reason is simple: there is no way to ever win. Sure, you can whack all the moles dumb enough to come out of their holes, but most of them stay burrowed underground so they can keep on doing what moles do (what do moles do, exactly, besides annoy Bill Murray in Caddyshack?).

Not only that, but the size of the field at play extends well beyond the horizon. You can't see all the holes. Sometimes there is no hole, just a mole. How can you whack what you can't see?

Also, these moles really know how to breed. For every mole you whack, a thousand more have been born, or hatched, or come to life the ways moles do. And from an early age, they are raised with one single goal in mind. To take everything you've got that you don't want them to have. The stuff you don't care about? They leave it behind for humans to consume. But if it's something important to you, evolution has given them the ability to smell it and the mental acuity to figure out a way to get it without you knowing they're taking it until it's gone.

Another thing these moles are is patient. They can wait you out for as long as it takes, and play all these psychological games with you. They will leave you alone at first. They will watch you sweat every time you hear about another mole somewhere else who took the stuff someone else really didn't want them to have, and the havoc that caused. And they see how scared that makes you, and how you demand everybody else to add another layer of protection on top of the 999,998 other layers of protection you already have, so this mole can't get to the stuff you don't want them to have.

They watch you until a couple of days pass with no problems, so you begin to get complacent enough to have a meal with your significant other, or your kids whose names you forgot because you haven't seen them since the day they were born, and then WHAM! the moles strike from a hole in a place you didn't realize was on the playing board, because you never turned the board upside-down to see what's underneath. And when you finally do look underneath the Whack-a-Mole board, you discover a labyrinth of tunnels connecting every corner of the planet; every country, every organization, every computer, every smartphone and tablet, every supposedly smart device, even some dumb ones.

At that point, like so many others who have risen through the ranks in the CyberSecurity field, one of five things happen: (1) you either vow to redouble your efforts to try to stop these moles once and for all; (2) you decide this is a good time to retire (even though you're only in your 40s) and let your spouse be the breadwinner (or if you're single, you move back in with your parents); (3) you change careers and decide janitorial services is more suitable; or (4) you become a mole yourself, realizing it's better to join them than to try to beat them.

Oh, I just realized I said there were five things that would happen: here's the fifth thing: you become a cybersecurity consultant, begin posting articles on LinkedIn touting how you can help other organizations solve their problems, and hopefully you get a couple of clients who will pay you lots of money forever, because CyberSecurity is, after all, just a game of Whack-a-Mole.