The Difference Between a Vulnerability Assessment and a Penetration Test

Many people who read this blog are familiar with what I call passive
learning — the phenomenon that causes one to be far better at doing a task
after returning from not doing it for a while.

Example: I play Table Tennis (not to be confused with ping pong), and when I
come back from a layoff of a few months I play at a level even greater than
what I left with. The interesting part about this is how shortlived this
period of superior play is. It usually only lasts for a couple of hours or
so, after which I return to my old habits and previous level of play.

I’ve been contemplating recently what it is that really happens during these
periods of enhancement, and I think it’s fairly simple. I think that geeks
(and probably everyone to some degree) literally think themselves to
better performance. There is something to be said for mental practice, in
other words.

When we move mentally, we imagine ourselves doing the movements of
professionals we have seen on T.V. or in videos. As a result of this, when
we first attempt the task after the hiatus we have a period of mimicking
those movements in real life. The effect is short lived, though, and we soon
regress to our previously inferior muscle memories.

I think an interesting field of research would be to try and train people
using enhanced versions of these techniques in addition to standard,
repetition-based physical training. Actually, I’m quite sure that the
technique is so powerful that it’s probably already being done. There just
seems to be too much to this to ignore.