An Off-The-Cuff Filler Talk By The Mentor Of #CloudWhistler

Um, I'm his mentor and I'm not from here. I'm from New York, by the way. So, I flew I literally flew in yesterday and came here and um I actually work I actually work blue team as a cyber security analyst. So, my my my talk cuz I have to I created a talk in my head. I actually spoke at BIES Romania, BIE New York. Um, a couple of BIES. I'm a fan of BSIE. I love besides cuz it's a great way to network and talk to people and it's a great way to just, you know, put yourself out there. So, I um I want to talk about my experience working in fast food and then getting into cyber

security because I I have a fast food background. So, if you guys don't know about me, um I did 12 years in restaurant and I did four years in the NYPD. So, I actually worked for the NYPD. Uh it was crazy. made no sense cuz it's like cuz I was like what the hell are you doing? They want to pay the end restaurant like yeah. So I I did I did pizzeria Chinese restaurant um Chipotle uh a lot of fast food experience uh customer service and believe it or not like people tell me oh yeah that's not relevant to it but uh it is relevant because you're working with customer service. So, if you have a

really good customer service, you're good at talking to people, uh, if you're trying to get a job in IT, especially like, and I know people don't like to hear this, but like if you're trying to get a job like help desk, like IT support where you're dealing with customers and you're dealing with people in general, having that background being in um, restaurant, it helps a lot. So, literally like I got a job in in restaurant, going in from there to IT, so much easier for me. You have no idea. I I got my first job working for the department of education. So I I did my uh CompTIA A+ um I got that certification and I went from getting my

A+ to getting my first job in IT for the department of education. And that job was like very stressful. I'm not going to lie to you. But it wasn't so bad because I had that fast food background. So it was so much easier. Like I I I'm grateful for being in restaurant because I have that patience and I don't get mad like that. You don't get super angry at the customer. Especially coming from working at, for example, like Chipotle. It's like, oh, I'm not paying extra for that guacamole, you know, and it's just they get angry and upset with you. But me, I was just like, all right, whatever. You didn't get mad at me. I

don't get mad. It's like, all right, whatever. So, you deal with crazy customers and you deal with uh a lot of dumb issues. Not going to lie to you. like oh my printer is not working or uh can you reset my password or um my I have no internet for some reason and and this is not even I'm not even making this up. So like when my first job I work for the department department of education and uh I don't have a car I don't drive my drive so I take the train. So, my first ticket took me an hour and a half literally just to go to that first ticket. And I took the train

and I I was a hardware technician and also a case like a like a software repair guy and I had like um I had like a memory. I had hard drives with me. I had like like to fix the screens and everything. All that was in my book bag. So, I'm traveling like I'm traveling around as a field technician and this ticket comes in and I'm like this ticket doesn't make any sense. is like my what do you mean your incident is not working on the computer? Like his computer's all messed up. And I'm like I thought like sometimes with customers they exaggerate the issue and it's not really a it's really easy easy fix literally. So I

went I went to this customer's computer and I looked at the issue and then their their internet cable is plugged into the computer and then the other end is plugged into the printer and it's I don't know why my internet's not working. I'm just staring at him like I'm like okay. and I just plug it in back to the wall. So, you you'll have issues like that when you get your when you get into it. If you're doing IT support, you get like dumb issues like, "Oh, my printer is not working, that issue." And I had I had one guy I had one guy one time uh I work with and um this guy was really upset because his uh

computer was super slow. So, I'm like, "Why?" I'm like, "Why is it so slow?" And then I literally go to task manager and it hasn't been up for like I mean sorry it has been up for like 200 days and they haven't done any Windows updates. So I was like okay well this guy's going to have to wait for two two hours maybe 3 hours because they haven't done Windows updates. And this is like when they had Windows 7. So I I restart his computer and it says pending updates 300 out of 300. So I'm like restarting his computer. And I'm like, "All right, I guess you should go get breakfast cuz by the time you come back, it'll be

done." Like literally, you you really can't do much. You have to update your machine. When was the last time you restarted? Oh, it's been like 200 days. I'm like, "How do you restart your computer?" And it's like, "Oh, I I go to the monitor screen and and turn that off." I'm like, "That's not how you restart a computer." So, I had to like show him how to restart a computer. So, I did I did like it support for a really long time. Um, I worked at uh Blackstone Group. I'm not sure you guys know Blackstone Group. worked at JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, a lot of big financial companies, you know, you deal with a lot

of weird issues and funny issues at the same time. That's the thing with IT support or help desk, like you deal with a lot of like dumb issues. And I mean, I laugh about it. It's just for me, it's funny because it's like I get paid to fix the easy stuff, you know? It's not that hard. So then I I wanted to um I wanted to transition over to cyber security. So I I uh I did like try hackme, you know, hack the box, learn about blue team, red teaming. I I tried red teaming. I'm like, yeah, this is not for me. I don't like this. So I try red teaming. And then I try blue teaming.

And I'm like, all right, I could see myself doing blue teaming. And I work a lot with veterans. I work a lot with um I'm a volunteer, so I work a lot with a company called Racist Cyber where we help Latinos, Latinos get into it. and we're partners with women in cyber security and we're partners with blacks in cyber security. So I work a lot with a lot of different companies and um literally I got help from like the community teaching me about like cyber security while I was working help desk or doing CIS admin stuff and I'm like oh okay so that's what blue teaming is and then I I I got hit with this is super random

but like I got hit with layoffs twice in a row while being while being in 19 and I was like I was like crap crap this job market is all messed up right what am I what am I supposed to do? And I I got lucky because by networking, just by networking and being active on social media and and being on LinkedIn, I ended up getting a job in cyber security. So my my first job that I ever got in cyber security was me being active on LinkedIn, like literally posting, oh, I'm looking for a job right now. People know me cuz I have a YouTube channel. People know me on social media. Oh, I I

don't I don't know what's going on right now with this job market, but I need a job right now. If you guys could like hook me up, I would greatly appreciate it. So, and I volunteer a lot and everyone was like reposting my stuff and sharing my stuff, commenting, trying to get myself out there a little bit, literally. And I was jobless. I couldn't I could not find a job for the dear life of me. So, I was like, "Shit, this is really bad right now." Not to curse or anything, but I uh I kept applying and just looking for stuff out there. And then I got I got like it was like not luck but it's like more like random like

I got like reached out to from like Besides Romania the the guy that that actually host the Besides Romania um stuff and he's like oh do you want to be a speaker at Romania and I'm like man I don't have a job right now like like you you sure you want me to go over there? Yeah I got you Kevin. So I ended up going to Romania and then grateful to God by the time I came back I ended up finding a job in cyber security. literally got I literally did a job interview while being at Romania and I got my first job in cyber security while being in Romania after being let go after being out of work for almost 10

months. So for like anyone here that's sitting here was like you could you could find a job. Networking is important. Uh trying to get a job is very involved. Like I I I I hate answering the question like about getting jobs in general because sometimes it's like it's not what you know, it's who you know a lot of times basically. So, it's like if you know someone, you're basically able to get a job, but um the job market is like wonky right now, but you should still be able to get a job. So, that's that's the thing that you should think about. And also like um try to divers that try to diverse your your resume in a way that

makes you stand out. Like by by that I mean like you make sure you have projects good projects on your resume relevant to whatever you're trying to do. So like for example like if you're doing blue team like how do you how do you create like a simulation using sim solutions or how do you create um stuff on on uh Microsoft defender or so like me me I'm really big at home labs so like I got two or three of my jobs in IT support was because of home labs I okay so uh this job was asking for active directory experience right it's just giving you a hypothetical example and uh I wanted to get active directory

experience So I was like all right so let me just download server 2022 and then put that on the VM put that on VMware virtual box and then install active directory and learn from scratch how to do it and then actually you could learn about group policy you can learn about server manager you can learn about all these things for free you don't even got to pay anything and that's and the job posting and it's like okay so how do I get how do I get uh office 365 experience so like you could just Google office 365 admin they give you a trial for 30 days and you can learn about in tune you can learn about intro ID and

then you can learn about Office 365 admin, learn about mailboxes, distribution groups, you learn about all these things there. It's actually free. You don't got to pay anything. And it's like, okay, so how do I get experience uh learning about patch management? So Ninja 1 is free for 15 days. So you get a trial of Ninja 1 and learn about patch management. So like a lot of these things that the job market asked for, you could actually get relevant experience. You literally just got to like go online and research it. And that's what I did. That's literally what I did for some of the jobs that I got. And and it's like, Kev, I have no

ticketing experience. How do I get experience with ticketing systems? Well, Jira is free. Service Now is free. Uh Salesforce is free. So, you can get experience using those ticketing systems. Same thing with um MFA, multiffactor authentication. Octa is free. You get Octa for free for a couple days and learn about Octa and learn about SSO integration. Same thing with Duel. Dual is free for MFA. And then how do I get uh mobile device management experience? And MOS 360 is also free. So you could get MOS 360, get a trial for that and then learn about you setting up your phone, mobile devices, how does it connect to the Wi-Fi, how the certificates work and things like that.

So a lot of these things you could literally learn and put it on your resume and it's going to make you stand out. So like that's that's my that's my advice for anyone that is brand new to IT or trying to get into it. like try to get relevant experience and try putting that on your resume and then that's going to make you stand out and also be active on LinkedIn. Make sure you have relevant certifications. Some some sorts are not really needed like some people some people have some people like I don't want to sound like really messed up but like some people have a lot of certifications and if you're brand new to it it doesn't help you at all like

why do you have so many searchs you don't even have a job yet like right like it kind of like doesn't help you at all. So it's like you want to make sure that you have relevant certifications. Like if you're applying for like you just say help desk for example obviously A+ makes sense. If you're applying for like a security job a blue teaming specifically obviously uh CYSA makes sense or security plus makes sense. If if you're applying for a network admin job obviously network plus and CCNA makes sense. So like those those certifications are important. You got to think about what search is relevant to what job you're applying for. So the things to keep in mind is is the is the

resume, the search, your LinkedIn profile. How is your LinkedIn profile set up? Like obviously you want to make sure your LinkedIn profile is relevant. It's professional. Um obviously you don't want to have a selfie photo of you like having a drink or whatever on LinkedIn. Doesn't make any sense. So like keep that very relevant. And yeah, and that's that's pretty much it for my talk. I just I I don't want to make it too long, but that's it. Yeah.