Standing Watch at 0200

That feeling never really left me. Years later, sitting across from cybersecurity teams, I started recognizing the same posture in the people doing incident response. Somebody’s always on call. Somebody’s always watching the alerts come in at 2am, wondering if tonight’s the night something actually goes wrong. It’s the same job, just in a different uniform.

I still remember what boot camp smelled like. Not because it was pleasant, but because fire watch does something to your senses. You’re up in the middle of the night, asking someone every ten minutes what time it is, waiting for your turn to stand post. You get handed what we called a moonbeam, just a flashlight, and then you’re either standing still or walking a slow lap, looking for anything out of place. Are the weapons secure? Is everyone accounted for? Is anything off?

The Same Job, Different Uniform

That feeling never really left me. Years later, sitting across from cybersecurity teams, I started recognizing the same posture in the people doing incident response. Somebody’s always on call. Somebody’s always watching the alerts come in at 2am, wondering if tonight’s the night something actually goes wrong. It’s the same job, just in a different uniform.

You Don’t Need a SOC to Stand Watch

I think that’s the part most business owners miss when they hear “cybersecurity” and assume it doesn’t apply to them. You don’t need a security operations center to have someone standing watch. You just need people around you who notice when something looks wrong, and who feel like they can actually say something about it.

The Night I Was Just an E4

I remember a moment early on when I was the highest ranking guy left on a ship, and I was just an E4, nothing fancy, and we lost communication with a group we had on shore. I had to radio up to an officer several ranks above me and ask him to move the ship. He laughed and asked me if an E4 had ever made a call like that before. I don’t think one had. But somebody had to say something, and in that moment it didn’t matter that I was the most junior guy in the room. What mattered was that I said it instead of hoping the problem would sort itself out.

Everyone Has This Happening Somewhere

I think about that a lot when I talk to business owners now, because they’ve all got a version of this happening somewhere in their operation, whether they know it or not. A frontline employee notices a vendor invoice that doesn’t add up. A new hire spots a process that doesn’t make sense. A junior team member catches something that everyone senior to them has walked right past. Those moments happen constantly. The real question is whether your business is set up to actually hear about it when they do.

What I’ve Carried Forward From Those Nights on Watch

Here’s what I’ve carried forward from those nights on watch:

• You don’t need seniority to notice a problem, but you do need clarity on what you’re looking for and enough trust in your team that speaking up doesn’t feel risky.
• Not everything coming in is equally urgent. I learned early to sort what mattered right now from what could wait, and to keep an eye on the small stuff that was quietly turning into the big stuff. Business owners are doing this same sorting every day, just with invoices and inboxes instead of intel reports.
• Staying quiet is never free. The Marine who doesn’t report what he sees and the employee who doesn’t flag the problem both end up costing you the same thing, which is time you didn’t realize you were losing until it was already gone.

This Week’s Pause Point

So here’s this week’s pause point for you. If someone on your team noticed something wrong tomorrow, would they know who to tell, and would they actually feel okay telling them?

Some Things Don’t Change

Some things really don’t change much between standing watch overseas and running a business back home.

Thanks for pausing with me. If any of this connects to what you’re dealing with, you can find more of what we do at itauditlabs.com.

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