One year in security - what was that thing called again? - Joel Potts

hey everyone as already been mentioned this is one year insecurity what's that thing called again I'm Joel Potts and if you really want to you can find me on Twitter I'm at your pots UK and this isn't going to be a technical talk but what I'm going to talk about is my first year in security some some of the things I found difficult such as cram learning maybe even touch on some things I enjoyed and we'll see what happens so this is my first time speaking at a conference I'd like to say a big thank you to B sides and to NIC trade should be my mentor and so let's get on with that so first of

all a little bit a little bit about me on my professional side I'm a security analyst at the NATO Communications and Information Agency I've got a couple of son certificates the G SEC and the G CH and hopefully soon the GCF a got a couple of other certificates as well the CCNA cyber ops and the xry certification for mobile forensics you'll notice on screen I've got two degrees Bachelor of Arts in English in Spanish and English and the BSC in intelligence is curry the reason for that is the Spanish one didn't go so well so about me personally unfortunately I don't have sweet nunchuck skills or sweet bow hunting skills I've got some computer hacking

skills because remember girls want boyfriends who have got sweet skills gosh so I also like to do online CTFs such as the ones on hack the box root me and our immersive labs has been mentioned in the previous presentation alongside that I like to play my home lab build things break things see how things work just get to grips with stuff I don't normally get chance to outside of the secure east side of things and my personal life I like to go rock climbing when I can I'm a Tottenham Hotspur funds please don't bill and doesn't that I spend time with my family and friends so let's move on to my journey whilst it all looks very

nice and neat up there going through it it wasn't really a lot of it was all over the place when at the same time overlapping here they're everywhere so let's start at the beginning of this journey in I was working in open-source intelligence during my first degree and it was cool and then after graduating I continued working in Olson and this is where I developed an interest in InfoSec looking at how I can go into it more technically and it was also here that a co-worker gave me the heads up about the Sun cyber retraining Academy so I thought what the hell I applied didn't really expect to hear back then I went back to work I went back to waiting and

waiting and waiting still in here much and then one day out of the blue I was on Christmas leave I was at my girlfriend's house home alone didn't have any contact I know no-one was replying to me it was really really boring that they this email came through and said congrats you've been accepted so I did what any sane person would do and I started dancing with the cap because no one was talking to me and then so before I got into the cyber training academy I did have to go through a phone interview some technical skills tests face to face interview but I can definitely say it was worth it and if it pops up again let people know about it

spread the word so before that when I went back to work before starting the Academy handed in my notice to say I didn't really know what to expect didn't know what was coming afterwards didn't really know what I'd do for work would I get work in the industry who knows so I started a blog about my experiences so even if I didn't end up doing anything with it I'd have something to look back on just to sort of remember it for myself but everything turned out all right in the end towards the end of the Academy the job search ramped up I wasn't really get much feedback at the start of that because I didn't yet have the qualifications but

when the G second did you say H certificates come in people start responding but not it was a real confidence boost considering before when I applied for stuff just got the standard you know got a lot lot of applicants at this time sorry in addition to this having the G SEC the G say age I also made it onto the GI advisory board mailing list so I did well in one of the exams which complete surprise have shift to bits with that and then I got offered my current position where unfortunately I haven't had the time to be able to study as much or as intensively as it was during the Academy which kind of went from going up

here to down here sort of tempo wise but I managed to do some more courses I did the CCNA cyber ops which Cisco was shelling out for free and I also did the four-five away on the work-study program with sons and recently I also finished my degree second one and I did a lot better this time but how did it feel like well I think SpongeBob and Patrick summing up pretty well right there there's a lot of screaming it really was an emotional roller coaster with the UPS the Downs the loop-de-loops sideways this way all over the place the stress the excitement the apathy at times was it really worth it being here yeah the wanting to give

up coming off the back of that and the loneliness all I can say is it was worth it this cross-training really got me somewhere that I want it to be so whilst I did work in Austin I managed to study a little bit in a little bit often and that was good it was sort of an introduction and the further I got into it I could see this mountain and mountain of knowledge in front of me that I had to take in and that was the first hurdle understanding that when you do cross train in your hard disks essentially full and you need to get rid of some clutter to make way for this new information the second

hurdle to borrow from running terminology again hitting the wall this knowledge builds up you see it growing growing and growing you're gonna hit the wall and you're gonna want to stop give up go home go back to what you want what you did before well you know so then as you progress you get back into it again you hit the third hurdle you see that the more you know and the more you learn the more you realize that you don't know this mountain just keeps getting bigger and then you realize it's not gonna be a quick and easy thing to cross train into an industry and speaking of quick things I'd like to talk about cram learning now

so as mentioned previously when I started I did a little bit and often awesome then when I started the sons side of things it was a bit old water this water via a head in front of the firehose moment and for anyone who hasn't been on a sons course for a simile fast pace of course that is freedom what it feels like if this crime learning way of doing things was also how I saw people study University how I've seen people study at school you study for an exam to pass that exam it's also how I've prepared for interviews you look at the job spec and you study you cram just for that but the problem

with this is how much do you really retain I read this somewhere in some marketing come from memory training up but they said that after one hour people retain less than a half of the information that was taught when they were being I was taught whilst they were giving it after one day people forget more than 70% of what was taught in training and after six days to a week it's up to 75% of the information that was given that people don't remember so what do you do when you've had all this information thrown at you when you get the job well you look a little bit like this to the first few weeks months maybe

that's how I felt I could do the job had the qualls but ten weeks before I was doing something completely different and I felt like an imposter and this is when I found out about impostor syndrome and that did start to set in a little bit only made worse by making little mistakes now such as in my first meeting with the sort of my team head DNS became the resolution e protocol and was doing zone transfers over over UDP not TCP and let's forget about incremental zone transfers for a minute but at the time that felt really huge to me and that's how I left that meeting I felt like an idiot I know it's not the worst thing I

could have said but I still felt like this for a while just those little mistakes from not having had enough exposure and enough time to learn the material and it just kept building up and it led me into trying to justify myself trying to count these mistakes take on extra work extra shifts overly detailed tickets reading more learning more trying to overcome this rather than accept that it was new and that these mistakes were sort of expected and when I did realize that ask him for help people you co-workers more than likely unless they're really awful tear will help but I only realised this after I started to get a bit ill with the stress the lack

of sleep and the fatigue setting in I was heading the burnout in a sense so I spoke to my support network my family my friends and they told me that they were proud of what I was doing not all of the extra work but I'd found something I had a passion for and I was going for it and eventually I just kind of got tired and I learned to accept it and then once I accepted it after a while I realized everyone's a bit like this everyone still makes mistakes and everyone's a lot like this new types of traffic Google quick blew my mind the first time I saw I had to google it HTTP for an

eighth response for example just google it you name it something goes down Googler if you still can and that sort of helped to ease my mind so I know this hasn't been the most polished presentation possible but let's say the day after I had that conversation my father sadly passed away so I know what it's like when life gets in the way of things and I felt I had to be here as that was one of the sort of last things we spoke about so to anyone getting into the industry who's in here I just want to say don't let these mistakes get in your way a year down the line you'll have made loads of mistakes but you'll

have learnt from them don't let these mistakes make you do extra shifts get yourself burnt out don't let it impact your health and finally cybers a great passion but when you start taking these extra shifts and this extra work and it starts to take care of your life you don't get to see your family and friends you don't get to do the things you enjoy all those extra shifts worth it thank you for listening does anyone have any questions