Welcome back to the Career Hacking Village here at DEF CON Safe Mode.
Many times when we're talking on social media or on Discord, we're always asking,
what is the best career path? And several times people will say, no, this is the way,
no, this is the way, no, this is the way. What we can tell you is that there are many
different ways. And I'm really excited to have my friend Pablo explain how he sees it
and his recommendations on your career path. Take it away, Pablo.
Thanks, Kathleen. So this talk is titled, In Theory, There's No Difference Between Theory
and Practice. And so where did this come from? First of all, it's normally attributed to Yogi
Berra, who dropped other pearls, like when you come to a fork in the road, take it. But this
was actually not one of his. So the difference between theory and practice actually, according
to Snopes, appeared first in the 1986 book about programming, The Art and Science of Programming.
So I thought it was apropos. A lot of times when we talk about how to get into InfoSec,
we devolve into this discussion about going to college and learning theory or the school of
hard knocks, the learning practice. And so there's always this push and pull between theory and
practice. So why are we here? As Kathleen mentioned, about every six months or so,
we see these kind of flame wars and discussions pop up on Twitter about how do you get into InfoSec.
And it comes from all sides. So you have some people that believe that security is a prestige
class and that you have to spend 10 or 15 years on a watch floor or on a call desk before you can
join security. And you have some people saying, look, I didn't go to college. I've got a fantastic
InfoSec career and I make a ton of money and the college kids seem really upset by that.
And the truth is there are many paths and they're all valuable. It's a matter of what you want to
get into it and who you are as a person. So I thought it would be best to have a nice balanced
discussion on that. So why do we even have these discussions? Why does it matter? Well, we all go
through these little life transitions, right? We finish a school, be it high school or college
or a trade school, that we have to go out and find work. Many of us serve some time in the
military and we have to figure out what we're going to do once we take the uniform off.
Some of us have life changes. We get married or we have kids or something in our life changes
and we decide that we want to do something else. Or sometimes our careers just go away or we decide
we're just dissatisfied with our careers and we want to get into this thing called InfoSec. And
how do we really do that? So some disclaimers. First of all, these views are mine and mine
alone. They don't belong to my employer. There's an exception to be found for absolutely everything
I'm going to say. So if you try to find fault with this talk, congratulations, you will.
Again, these are my opinions and what I've experienced. And those opinions are based
upon my observations. But I'm also going to freely admit that I have biases. I took a very
particular path and I've seen what I've seen and I haven't seen what I haven't seen. And so
your mileage may vary. So a little bit about how my path came into InfoSec so that you understand
kind of my latent biases. I've been doing this for a little bit. I got access to my first
8088 class computer in 1981 and then played with modems and BBSs. In the early 90s,
I was a developer for Expert Systems. Those of you that are in AI may know what that is.
In 1993, I went through a life change and I decided to join the United States Navy.
Got a degree in computer science in 1998. Spent some time at NSA. Got a master's degree in
computer science 10 years after my bachelor's. Went back to Cyber Command. Then was faculty at
the Navy's postgraduate school teaching master's level computer science and information sciences.
Then I went to US Special Operations Command Hacker Makerspace called SoftWorks. And I just
finished a PhD in information sciences. Now that said, the picture is a little dated,
you might be able to make out that that's actually me with the rest of the school of
root. So I have been in the community for quite a while. So with that all being said,
we're going to have this discussion. Let's try not to turn it into a flame war.
We can disagree, but we should be respectful about how we disagree with each other.
So those of us that have been around for a really long time remember the quote-unquote
traditional path to an infosec job. There was no cybersecurity degree when I came up and went
through college. And so the running joke was that if you wanted to be a computer security expert,
and you could either go out and work at a SOC watch floor, become a forensic analyst,
and then a lab director, and a chief security officer, and 20 years later, you would be highly
paid consultants. Or the hacker method, where you became a hacker, you became a criminal,
you got convicted of a crime, and two years later, you were a highly paid consultant,
maybe 14 months with good behavior. Those days, unfortunately, or fortunately,
depending on your standpoint, may have gone by the wayside. So what are the contemporary paths?
How do most of us get into infosec careers this year? Well, there's typically three paths. There's
the School of Hard Knocks, there's the certification path, and then there's the
college education path. And each of those come with their own pros and cons. And so we should
discuss those a little bit. So the first one is the School of Hard Knocks. This is where you kind
of teach everything to yourself. It's a very traditional path for hackers, because there used
to not be college classes. There used to not be a CEH or a CISSP. You had to go out and read
Frack Magazine and read 2600, or go to hacker boards and teach this stuff to yourself.
One of the pros is the cost. The cost is essentially free. You only learn the things
that you're interested in learning. You don't have to bother with any baseline things you don't care
about. It takes the least amount of time before you get to the amount of stuff, before you get to
the subjects that you care about. We'll come back to that least amount of time. And you get practical
skills now. You learn what you need to solve your problems. And so you become a practitioner
immediately. And really, you're only limited by your personal drive and talent. Nobody's going
to tell you that you've got to learn about X before you learn about Y. Nobody's going to tell
you that you have to spend two years doing this before you go do that. You can just hop right in
and do the things that you're interested in doing. So what are the cons? Well, I mentioned time.
Least amount of time are the three paths. Well, that depends on how you cut it. Generally speaking,
there was a paper called Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell that says, in order to become an expert
in any one thing, you have to spend 10,000 hours doing it. So 10,000 hours, if you break it out
into eight-hour work days, means 3.42 years, which sounds remarkably like a bachelor's degree,
which takes about four years. And when you add summer vacation, and when you add spring break,
you're at four years. You can do it faster. And again, your mileage may vary. If you're a very
talented, very driven person, you might be able to do it in less time. But it is still a substantial
amount of time if you want to become an expert. Typically speaking, when you go through the
School of Hardenomics, you're all practice and very little to no theory. And the problem with
all practice is that the tools change, and the tactics, techniques, and procedures change,
and the approaches change. And if you're not based in a theoretical background,
and you're not actively using it, those skills become very perishable.
And so if you're not actively using it, you're going to lose it very quickly, and you're going
to have to come back and reteach yourself. Employment opportunities. Boutique shops
are a good opportunity for you because they're smaller, and they're willing to take a chance.
A lot of the boutique shops are started by rock stars in this community, and they didn't take a
college education in many cases. They learned through the School of Hardenomics, and so they
understand it. Independent consultant is another one. You have to do your own business development,
but you can certainly do that. You certainly can get hired by a corporation. The challenge
with getting hired with a corporation without a degree is you have to pass the HR check,
the human resources check. And the problem with that is the way that the industry has moved is a
lot of times, unless you get a personal introduction, you have to go through an automated
resume system, and it's looking for certain ticks. And if you don't check one of those ticks,
like maybe they require a bachelor's degree, your resume may never get seen by an actual human being.
The other issue with the School of Hardenomics is survivability. So when we go through hard
economic times, what happens is usually there's an accountant somewhere, an executive somewhere,
that wants to cut cost. And the first thing they cut is high cost assets, which don't have a whole
lot of background. So it's easy to justify in a business sense, paying somebody with an advanced
degree, a large sum of money, because they've got a demonstrated record that the school vouches for
it. That may be harder if you learn through the School of Hardenomics, unless you're a name brand.
If you're a name brand, then that may be different, but it is something to consider.
So here's a fantastic example of an absolute rock star who came up through the School of
Hardenomics, Frank Height. So, you know, Frank got started in this earlier than I did. He started
with a PDP in 1979 at his home. In 1981, he emancipated and went to go work for Chase Manhattan.
Never finished 10th grade. So not only does he not have a college degree, he doesn't have
a high school diploma. He's one of the best-read, most educated people I know without any formal
education, because he's just a tremendously driven and intelligent individual. In 88,
he went to work for the New York Transit Authority, created the emergency 911 system for
MCI, went to go work for NAVSEA and SWFPAC, which are Navy entities, found a NSA penetration
testing operation in 1997, and became the 10th employee at at stake in 99. And since then, he's
founded Leviathan Security, which has a tremendous name in the industry, and he's been a TED speaker
times three. So again, no formal education, just a tremendously talented, driven individual
with a curious mind. So absolutely, you can do this without certifications, and you can
absolutely do this without education, and here's a fine success example.
So the other way is certifications. Those have come into vogue of late, and we've all kind of
heard the names. There's CEH and OSCP and OSCE and CISSP. And what are all these things? Well,
the first thing to be aware of is not all these certifications are created equal,
and they're intended for different audiences. For better or worse, if you want to work for the
U.S. government, you're probably going to do much better if you have a CISSP, and that's actually
true in industry. I've got one. I've got my own thoughts on that certification as compared to
other certifications, but it's important for you to weigh what it is that you want to do for a living,
what kind of career you want to have, and see if that certification is going to help you get that
job or help you become more proficient in what you want to do. Many of the certifications focus on
practice with little to no theory, but there's some exemptions. They're vendor motivated. Those
certifications are there to make money, right? They want to sell you a boot camp. They want you to pay
for the class. They want you to pay to take the certification, and then they want you to pay fees
to maintain that certification. There are lots of paths to getting these, but primarily
you can take a class, a boot camp, or you can do online and self-teaching by picking up a book.
Most of these certifications have books where you can teach yourself the same things, and then
your certification exams are tends to be to either proctored exams, which means that you go to a
testing facility and they verify you are who you say you are before you take the exam, and then
there are online exams. One of the things that does come up, and it was a problem in the past with
some of the certifications, is that the online exams, you could actually go out and pay somebody
to take the exam in your stead and get the certification. So once that's out, those
certifications become less valuable in the eyes of industry, and so just be aware of that.
So what, you know, what are the pros of certifications? It's a great boot camp, right? If you're starting
at zero and you don't know how to get going, you're going to get lots of practice in a very
short amount of time. Most of these boot camps are a couple of days or maybe a week long. Some
of them are a little bit longer if it's a program. You're going to go from nothing to functional a
very short time. Theory may vary, but typically very little theory in these. If you do a boot
camp, you're going to get some lead learning, which means that you're going to have somebody
that's ostensibly a subject matter expert to answer your questions. There's going to be defined
a progression of knowledge, so if you don't know where to start or where to go next, typically these
boot camps will help you out with that. In the certifications, many of them will help you pass
an HR check because they're familiar with the vendors, they're familiar with the certifications,
and they're familiar with the knowledge you have to demonstrate in order to achieve those
certifications. And so in many cases, those automated resume checkers will actually tick
the box if you've got the right certifications that they're looking for. So what you're looking
at on the screen now is two courses. In the red box is one course, and in the blue box is the other
course. And my question for you is, what is the difference? And I'll give you a few seconds here
to read it. Good. So both of these are actually courses in exploitation development. One of them
is a master's level course, the other one is a course from a vendor that you take in one week.
So the master's level course takes 12 weeks, the vendor course takes one week. You're covering the
same information. But what you should think about is, if you take it in 12 weeks, are you going to
get a much deeper understanding and much more practice than if you take it one week? And I would
suggest that, yeah, you will. You know, if you're spending 12 weeks with the material, you're going
to spend more time exploring that material and going deeper on it than if you spend one week.
That doesn't mean that you're missing out on a whole lot of stuff, you're taking the one week,
but just be aware that a one-week boot camp is just going to give you an introduction to all
of these subjects. And so you're going to have to go through and spend some of your own time
really studying it. So what are some of the cons of certification? So I went out to a well-known
vendor, who will remain nameless, and I pulled up the cost for achieving their certification.
So their one-week class is $6,200. And then you have to wait a certain amount of time before you
can take the certification. And so if you want access to their online labs after the course,
it's another $729. So we're up at $7,000. And then each certification attempt is $729. So
you're up close to $8,000, and that's if you pass it the first time. If for whatever reason you fail
it and you have to go back and take it, well, you're probably going to need access to the labs,
and you're probably going to need to pay for another certification event. So that's another
$1,500 every time that you fail to pass. And then on top of that, you're going to have to pay to
renew this every three to four years. So at $8,000, and we'll talk about the cost of college
later, but $8,000 is a substantial amount of money. Not just compared to college, but compared to
anything, $8,000 is a substantial amount of money. The other part is, as I mentioned, the certifications
tend to be tools-focused. Not always, not all certifications, but they tend to be tool-focused.
And so they're perishable, right? If you take a certification and then you don't do that
on a daily basis for your job, your skill in that set is going to deprecate. The other thing is,
what do they demonstrate? And so there's this ongoing discussion that always happens about,
does that demonstrate knowledge or does that demonstrate your ability to take an exam? And
different people have their own biases on this. I absolutely know people that could not pass a
certification exam that absolutely had mastery of the material. They just couldn't take a test.
I've also seen it the other way, where somebody passes the test and they clearly knew nothing
about the material. And so there's really a discussion there that happens, and hiring
managers will think about this, about does the certification really demonstrate that you know
what I need you to know? So let's talk about college. I know that this is a very personal
subject for a lot of people. Not all schools and all programs are created equally. If you go and
get a computer science degree from MIT, it's going to be very different than if you get a
computer science from, you know, maybe a community college or from University of Phoenix or some
other schools. Take a look at what the reputation is, not just of the school, but of that particular
program in that school. Most of you have never probably heard of University of Texas Dallas.
They happen to have one of the top-ranked schools for computer science in the country.
University of California Santa Barbara has one of the top-ranked schools for cyber security-based
computer science. So really take a look at the programs, take a look at the schools,
and realize that they're not all created equal. Most of the colleges will focus on theory with
varying levels of practice. And again, that is a question that you should ask when you're
considering a school in a program. How much is this theory and how much of this is practice?
Then the other question you want to ask is, do I want to just study? Do I want to become a
full-time college student or do I want to work and study? Now some of us, we're not going to have
that option. Our life situations are such that we've got people that depend on us, we've got
dependents, and so we're going to have to work and study. And that's okay, but for those of us
that have the choice, we've got to balance possibly taking larger loans out to concentrate on our
studies, vice taking smaller loans out, and working and studying. And that's very much a
personal choice. Job placement. If you're going to go to a college, you should find out if they're
going to help you get a job afterwards. College degrees are not cheap, they're very expensive,
and so getting the degree shouldn't be where your college stops. Your college or university
should help you with job placement afterwards. And then there's a value proposition versus cost.
If you... getting a college degree in something that is not marketable is a personal choice. So
really, if you want to work in InfoSec, you know, that history degree may or may not help you. And
we'll talk more about unrelated degrees either. But if you know you want to work in InfoSec,
perhaps you want to consider cybersecurity or an IT or a computer science degree.
But there are other degree paths. You can either get an unrelated degree and get into InfoSec,
or you can get a related degree and get into InfoSec. And those have their own pros and cons.
And I'll show you an example of somebody that has an unrelated degree and has a fantastic InfoSec
career. So the pros of colleges is that all industries and all companies recognize bachelor's
degrees and master's degrees and PhDs. They're resilient, they tend to be theory focused,
which moves at a much slower pace than practice. And so the tools change, the theory very rarely
does. But if you've got a degree in that field, you're going to get that HR pass. If they're
looking for a bachelor's degree, I'm not aware of someone that says, well, you've got a bachelor's
degree, but it's not the right bachelor's degree, and therefore we're not going to take you.
Job survivability, I talked about when we hit hard economic times,
the people with degrees that are working in a field with their degree tend to be more survivable
than the people that don't have degrees that are working in a field. Right, wrong, or otherwise,
that's just kind of how it happens. It's a non-perishable skill, right? Again, I talked
about the 10,000 hours to become an expert, 3.42 years, that's roughly the amount of class time
that you're going to spend getting a bachelor's degree. Writing, writing is absolutely critical.
I'll talk more about that. You're going to spend a lot of time writing in college.
You can be the best penetration tester in the world, but you have to be able to communicate
your findings in writing. And if you can't do that, you're probably not going to be hired back.
Non-related courses, is that actually a benefit? I actually believe it is.
It's easy for us to learn things that we're interested in within our chosen major. It is
much harder to pay attention, learn things that we're not familiar with and we're not good at.
But learning is like anything else. The more you practice at learning, the better you become at
learning. And so as you're asked to learn new things throughout your career, it actually becomes
easier to learn things the more you've practiced it. And then cost, it may or may not be a pro.
Again, that depends on how you choose to fund your college education. If you use
grants and scholarships, then cost is probably not prohibitive. But you also have to make some
lifestyle choices about how you want to live while you're going through college. Otherwise,
you're going to end up racking up a lot of debt that may or may not be a good value proposition.
So writing and unrelated courses. Writing is absolutely critical for success. That's
not just me saying that's Lenny's ulcer. Lenny's ulcer, among various and sundry other things,
is a fantastic SANS instructor. And he teaches the reverse engineering of malware. And he says,
listen, if you want to excel in information security, you've got to have strong writing skills.
Often these things are ignored. Many of us don't like to write. I am not a fan of writing. I'm not
going to sit there and practice writing. I don't do short stories or any of those things. I know
lots of people do and I envy them. It is something that I've had to work very hard at.
Most of us in this field tend to ignore writing because we're more interested in the technical
skills. But just like technical skills, writing requires practice. And so if you go to college
and you're forced to take unrelated classes, you're going to be forced to practice writing.
And it's one of those things that if you're not going to do it on your own, you need to find
somebody that's going to force you to do it. This may help you do it. The other thing is that
understanding other fields helps you explain things. Very rarely are we going to do InfoSec
for the sake of InfoSec. Normally we're going to do InfoSec for the sake of a company. That company's
mission may not be InfoSec. It may be a bank. It may be an educational institution. It may be
an engineering institution. And if you can't understand what it is that that company does,
you're probably not going to be able to communicate very well why they should be
concerned about InfoSec. So what are the cons? Well, cost, right? You have to be cognizant of
the financial cost of college. College is definitely not cheap. You have to think,
make some choices about how you're going to live. You have to discuss, think about the applicability.
Unrelated courses are going to be required. Listen, any degree that you get, you're going to
have to take English Composition, and you're probably going to have to take History, and
you're probably going to have to take College Math. It's something we all kind of suffer through,
but you're just going to have to do that. The baseline related courses are good because that's
where you get your introduction to theory, but they tend to be not very exciting. For those of
us that love this stuff, we already kind of know how to program in Python, right? We don't really
need an Intro to Python class, but the college is going to probably require that if you're taking
Computer Science, and so you're just going to have to suffer through it. One of the criticisms
is that college is not practical. They tend to be a little bit behind, and that's true in many
programs. They're not keeping up with the latest and greatest because they're not trying to teach
you practice. In many cases, they're trying to teach you theory, which moves at a much slower pace.
The other problem is time. College requires a significant time investment. Even if you're a
full-time student, it's probably going to take you three or four years to finish a bachelor's.
A master's is going to take you, even if you're a full-time student, probably two years.
So, let's talk a little bit about the cost. This is the average cost as pulled from an
independent journalist for a university. So, a public two-year in-district is $3,400.
A public four-year is $9,000. Now, if you remember a few slides ago, we talked about certifications,
and a one-week class in a certification tent was $8,000. So, for $1,000 more, you get to spend
an entire year at a university becoming a dedicated learner. So, what's the value proposition there?
If you're going to go to an out-of-state school, yeah, it's going to be a lot more expensive,
right? You're looking at, on average, $24,000. And if you go to a private university, you're
looking at $32,000. So, these are all things to keep in mind. Maybe the best option is not to move
far away from home, unless you're chasing a particular school and a particular program,
because they really teach the things exactly that you want to learn, or they have good insight in
the industry that you want to go. If you want to work in Silicon Valley, absolutely go to a
University of California school, right? Because they're there, and they have established relationships.
But these are just the costs for tuitions and fees. These don't include things like
your living expenses. They don't include things like your meal plans, and they don't include
things like your books. Let's have a little bit of a discussion about reducing cost.
This is a mock-up of my dorm room. Actually, that's not quite true. This is a mock-up of
the dorm room after they remodeled it after I graduated. It looks pretty much like a prison.
I lived a very spartan lifestyle, but because I did that, I incurred very little... actually,
in my case, I incurred no cost. But if you want to have a really nice apartment, and you're a
full-time student, and you're not working, recognize that your lifestyle is going to go on
your student goals, and so that's going to drive up your cost. And so, while I fully recognize that
college is expensive, I often question when people say, well, I've got a hundred and some odd
thousand dollars of debt for going to school, and I ask if they lived in a dorm, and they show me
pictures of this fully laid out apartment with giant screen TVs. Delayed gratification is a
thing. If you don't want to incur a lot of cost while you're in college, you may want to cut back
your living expenses a little bit. So, commons of college, you know, the applicability, you're
going to be taking a lot of unrelated courses. You're still going to have to pay for those
courses. Again, they're tangentially related. Practice varies. Not all programs provide you the
same amount of practice, and not all schools are the same, right? Contact hours with your professors
and your instructors matter. Faculty that have been in the real world and really are subject
matter experts matter. One of the things I will tell you is you are going to meet a lot of faculty
members at some schools that have never been in the real world. They've spent their entire life
in academia, and so their view of industry and what's needed to succeed in industry is going to
be very different than someone who has spent some time in industry doing it. Usually, you get
good, fast, or cheap. Choose two. With universities and college education, it's normally choose one.
There are some that are good and cheap, but that's rare. You really have to be lucky
enough to be living close to a school that has a good program, but they're definitely not fast.
If it's fast, there are some schools out there that are online, and they will tell you that you
can get a master's degree in one year. It's probably not going to be cheap, and it's probably
not going to be good. Let's be honest about that. So, go into it with your eyes open. The other
thing that you see is a lot of schools are going to advertise that they're NSA
Academic Centers of Excellence. I will tell you, having taken two schools through that certification
program, that that certification is absolutely worthless. It is not that hard to get accredited
as an NSA Academic Center of Excellence, and it's a paperwork drill. The NSA asks schools
to make sure that they teach certain things, and if they have one slide on one course that mentions
that subject, then they get to claim that they taught it. That is really not what NSA and
Cyber Command were after. So, I would not really consider that Academic Center of Excellence
certification for a school as worthwhile. Don't buy that.
So, another con is the applicability. I used to teach not just at the graduate level, but at the
undergraduate level, and I happened to teach one of the last classes that my undergraduates took
before they graduated. And many, many, many of my students would come to me and go,
hey, listen, you know, Professor Brewer, loved your class. It was great. I'm about to graduate
with a degree, a bachelor's degree in computer science. I don't feel qualified to do anything.
Congratulations, you're not alone. We all feel that way. If you spend any time in InfoSec,
you're just going to get used to the imposter syndrome. I still have it. Many of the people
up on stage today are still going to have it. But what you need to realize is that having a
bachelor's degree doesn't demonstrate that you're an expert in something.
A bachelor's degree demonstrates that you're capable of being taught and learning new things.
And so your employers know that. Because you've got a bachelor's degree in computer science,
they don't expect you to hop in and be an expert programmer. They expect that when they stick you
with a more seasoned senior programmer, that they're going to be able to teach you the things
that you need to do to accomplish your job there. A master's degree doesn't mean that
you're a master of your trade. It absolutely does not. What it means is that you're capable
of teaching yourself. If you don't know something and you're asked to do it, you're capable of going
out and finding resources and teaching yourself. And a PhD absolutely doesn't mean that you're an
expert in anything. What it means is that you're capable of conducting independent scientific
research. So a lot of people do ask me, because I've just gotten one, should I get a PhD? And my
answer to this is, you should only get a PhD for three reasons. The first one is, if you want to
work in academia, if you want to be a university professor, absolutely go get a PhD. There's a
hardcast system in there about tenure-track PhDs and non-tenure-track PhDs and then lecturers.
The other reason is, if you want to do research, professional research, for your career,
go get a PhD. And the last reason to get a PhD, which was my reason, was I just wanted one.
Does it really help your career? It's arguable. I would say most cases the juice is probably not
worth the squeeze on that one. It was just a personal goal I'd set for myself for reasons
that, well, I'm just not going to get into. But just be aware of what those degrees are supposed
to demonstrate. None of these demonstrate that you're an expert. So unrelated degrees,
everybody needs InfoSec, right? It doesn't matter if you're a book publisher, if you're a bank,
if you're a manufacturer, if you run industrial plants. All these things right now run on IoT
and computers, and so they all need InfoSec. And taking these unrelated courses helps you
learn the language of non-InfoSec people. If you're an InfoSec person and you go talk to your
boss at a bank about IP addresses and ROP, and they're just going to run you out of the room.
They pay you good money so they don't have to hear that language. They want to know,
you know, what do I gain, what do I lose, what does it cost, and why do I care?
So you're going to have to translate the geek speak and the InfoSec to business processes
and thought processes of executives. Baseline courses, regardless of degree, are going to be
the same. It doesn't matter if you're going to get a bachelor's in history, a bachelor's in women's
studies, a bachelor's in computer science, or a bachelor's in electrical engineering.
You're all going to have to take college math. You're all going to have to take English composition.
Those baseline courses are the same, and they're meant to be a good foundation for the rest of your
learning. I mentioned writing practice. You're going to get a lot of writing practice, regardless
of your degree. That writing is important. It's actually critical. I would say in many cases,
it's at least as critical, if not more critical, than your technical knowledge.
But if you're going to get an unrelated degree and you want to work at InfoSec, at some point
you're going to have to come back and either get some training or some education on the tech side.
You can't just hop in from a history degree and decide that you're going to be
an InfoSec analyst without going back and actually understanding what some of the InfoSec
language means and understanding something about how computers and networks work.
So, you know, here's a fantastic example of somebody that's successful with an unrelated
degree. Tracy Malief, many of you know her, InfoSec Sherpa. She's got a bachelor's in history
and she's got a master's in library sciences. She spent 10 years working as a librarian,
then was a cyber analyst at Glasgow SmithKline, got her first InfoSec certification in 2017,
and in 2019 she became an InfoSec analyst for New York Times. So library sciences doesn't seem like
it's a related degree. However, what it taught her to do was how to do research very, very well.
She's certainly a much better researcher than I am, and it taught her how to write exceedingly
well. And because of that, she's been tremendously successful, not only in the hacker community,
but as a professional InfoSec analyst. So absolutely, all degrees are valuable,
and you certainly can work in InfoSec if you have an unrelated degree.
So Immanuel Kant said that experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience
is mere intellectual play. And it's true. You need both. You need a little bit of theory,
and you need a little bit of experience and practical knowledge if you want to be successful.
Otherwise, you're really just a one-sided professional. So you need a bit of both.
So great. I've got more questions about this. Where can I go for learning and networking
resources? Well, congratulations. If you're listening to this, you're already doing that.
DEF CON and hacker conferences and hacker collectives are great insight. It's a great
place to meet people that may be doing things that you're interested in, or that have good and
bad experiences to share with you on their path. Makerspaces, there are makerspaces throughout the
country and throughout the world. Lots of professionals have a passion for InfoSec and
what they do that are willing to share their experiences and share their knowledge for
little or no cost. Capture the flag exercises are great. One of the things I often hear is,
I don't feel like I know enough to do capture the flag exercises. That's great. If you knew how to
do the capture the flag exercise, it wouldn't be fun. So what I would say is go out there and try
it and figure out what you can figure out. And what you can't figure out, go back a week later.
What you're going to see is that the teams that did well did write-ups on how to solve the
challenges. And that's going to give you insight into not only how to solve the challenges,
but subjects that you may want to go back and learn more on. Mentors and mentees,
everybody needs a mentor. I've got several. And I learned a lot from my mentors. Here's a
hidden trick, though. I learned far more from my mentees than I learned from my mentors.
They often ask me questions that I go, you know what, I actually have no idea, and I have to go
back and research it. And I have to learn it well enough to explain it to my mentee. So both being
a mentor and a mentee is a great way to learn things. There are lots of free online training,
everything from YouTube to online classes to Khan Academy. Hacker cons, you can attend or
you can volunteer. Attending is always great because you get to go to ideally all the talks
that you want to do. Hidden trick of mine is to volunteer at the cons. I've been doing it for a
long time. Particularly if you volunteer for speaker operations, you get a lot of one-on-one
time with the speakers. You get to ask questions without anybody else in the room. So that's
really, really great. For military members that are leaving, there's a program called Skill Bridge
where you can go get an internship for six months at a company. That company doesn't pay your salary.
The DOD pays your salary. So they get a free intern. You get free job experience. You get to
try out that company and decide if you really want to get hired there. So that's a great deal.
For college students and for people taking either the School of Hard Knocks or the certification
path, go get an internship, either paid or unpaid. Internships are great. Not only do they let you
gain some skills, they let you learn about the company. That lets the company learn about you.
And oftentimes you get a job, not because you submitted a resume, but because you have a
personal relationship with somebody in a company. Professional organizations, ISC Squared, ISACA,
all of those tend to have monthly meetings. Those are great. Go network. Go talk to people.
They will give presentations. If you want to know how they got to learn about what they learned,
they will tell you. Oftentimes they're happy to do that. Boot camps and lunch and learns,
a lot of organizations will offer boot camps and lunch and learns for free in some cases because
they want you to sign up for their paid classes later. But you don't have to. You can go for an
hour and learn about Network Recon or OSINT or whatever it is that they're talking about.
So lots of free resources out there. So at the end of this, what's the best solution?
It's a choose your own adventure. If you want to be a ninja, do all three paths. Do some
experimentation on your own. Go through the school of hard knocks, get some certifications,
take some college classes, get a degree, but choose a path and start on it. Journey of a
thousand steps. You have to take that first step. What you should consider is what are your goals
when you start on this journey? What is your next goal that you want to achieve? And how can you
best get there given your timeline, your finances and your goals? So there is no wrong path. There
are pros and cons to all of them. Eventually, if you want to be professional, you're going to find
out that you've done all three. And so it's really just a matter of which path do you want to start
on first? There is no wrong path. So with that, thanks so much for your time and I will be on the
discord if you have questions. Have a great day. Pablo, thank you so much for all of that. Just
sort of great overview because as you said, we tend to have this discussion and everyone camps
in my way is right or my way is right. And it really is. Everyone needs to customize their own
career path and take bits and pieces. And depending on your finances, where you are in life,
all of it. And that's what's so great about the industry is that we have so many resources.
We have so many role models. We can craft our own path. And employers are also starting to
really realize that experience over certifications. But it's going to change
depending on the employer. I really appreciate you pulling this presentation together and also
all your great comments to people's questions in discord. I want to remind everyone that we're
doing resume review and career coaching all day Friday and all Saturday afternoon. You need to
sign up in the discord channel. Pablo, thank you so much. I can't wait to be able to hug you in
person. Thanks, Kathleen. Looking forward to seeing you. Take care.