From IT Hobby to Cybersecurity Career: My Journey and Mentors

Dec 12, 2022 Dec 12 at 12:38am

My discussion post on my MIT Class tonight. 🙂

Good Evening All, 

I have always had a passion for CyberSecurity from an early age. I fell in love with computers. As I watched the internet blossom, I learned how to hack hardware, trying to make different games run better, from Wolfenstein to Doom. I wanted better graphics and experience. With AOL and the internet chat rooms, I started to see that 1st had social engineering going on. I learned about ghosting, spoofing, and many things on the fly. I was getting into people’s accounts and profiles, not maliciously but out of curiosity, and proving that I could. 

I understood backdoors, pwned a system, and got pwned. I was the person my employer called when someone locked themselves out. Unfortunately, I had really bad bosses who didn’t guide my experience or mentor me, and I just never continued working with those tools or following security. 

Years later ( and a few jobs later) I discovered Hak5.org, Darren Kitchen, and Snubs (Sharron Morse); they helped get my passion into cybersecurity again, I regularly tune in and follow Snubs on Threatwire, Dr. Gerald Auger of Simplycyber and the Daily Cyber Threat Briefing, John Mason, John Hammond, and tons of other mentors who help ignite my passion in the Cyber field again. I have been in IT for nearly 30 years, but I never have been on the defense side of Cybersecurity. I have always looked at hacking as part of my IT role to fix things or make a program work, but without the mentorship, I never figured out how to turn that IT Hobby into a career. 

A few years ago, I found Georgia Weidman on Facebook and YouTube, and it clicked. She is an autistic woman who was able to get into Cyber; even with my learning disabilities, I should be able to port my experience in IT into Cyber. When I found the simplycyber community, I knew I was in the right place and that I should work on pivoting into security. 

I am active on Discord and follow the work of many different communities. I have to really thank Jax Scott, Eric Taylor, and Gerald Auger, as their stories have really pushed me to this class and to work in cyber. If you don’t know SimplyCyber.io, you should. Gerald Auger is currently working on different Careers in Cyber Security, and his GRC was terrific. Every weekday, I start my day with SimplyCyber and take on the CISO Series Podcast to keep myself updated on cyber. 

Final thought: For the last many years, I have worked with different organizations in different emergency and disaster services. Over this summer, I listened to the CISO Series Podcast, and David Spark, the producer, said that CISOs are Tech innovators and disaster/incident responders, and it clicked. David Spark said that the CISO type is those who want to grow up to be in Emergency Services, such as military, EMS, Fire, or Police. 

I want to be a CISO Because I love new Technology, I want to innovate, I want to figure out how to protect my organization from threats, and I want to be ready if we go right off Boom!!

Best 
George S