New Beginnings

What better way to start this new blog than to set the scene with how I found myself here in this cybersecurity industry.

The long story goes back several years, and spans a good few anecdotes. Shall we save that for another day? Yes, good plan. The short(er) version goes back 12 months, to when I was studying security principles in my own time, and making a 5-year plan to get out of my Local Government job, and into my dream job: keeping people safe, finding security vulns and writing exciting code.

Having done well on a test online to assess my cyber skills I was invited to apply for a scholarship at the first SANS Cyber Academy - a process culminating in an interview in London in July. I won a place, quit my job(!) and attended in September-October, along with 30 other cyber security enthusiasts.

SANS really pulled out all the stops, and 8 weeks later I emerged with 3 GIAC certs, a new bunch of friends, a head pulsing with new knowledge, skills and possibilities - and no job.

But 2 months later I landed my first infosec job - and here I am, living the dream, doing the stuff. I now work as a Cyber Security Analyst at e2e-assure, where I monitor bad stuff, analyse threats and attacks, research vulnerabilities, blog about security, and generally do exciting stuff that I really care about.

This blog is an outlet for my enthusiasm for infosec, ethical hacking, encryption and decryption, coding, vuln research, and plenty more related things.

I hope you will enjoy sharing in some of my challenges and experiences.