BSidesATL 2018 - Mail Carts to Malware (Jessica Pepper)

my name is Jessica Cuthbert I had a good operation sample Asst at Macy's that's pretty much of a fancy way of saying I work at a sock and my Bennett make seeds now for ten years and obviously started in the mill I don't know if you guys saw on Twitter it's a couple months ago I think that hashtag my beard cut Gosei I was like wow there's so many awesome stories out there so many unique paths so I'm really excited to be able to share my husband gets today so like I said I started in the mailroom and it was really awesome to start there because you know I didn't realize when I first started there and Macy's is like

oh I'm just getting another jobs gonna pin bills but then I realized X works with really lot of really smart people you know and there's a good chance to start networking with you know the operations teams that are sending equipment in and out of the building and really get to know them and you know I started realizing Tina so I put myself through school and I don't know if you guys have ever done full-time job and full-time school at the same time it's pretty awesome so you know a lot of people are coming at me oh you're so tenacious or so you know motivated and all this good stuff and I'm like yeah I'm just really tired so eventually you

know I got noticed I got to networking aboard myself through school and ended up getting the opportunity to get into field services and kill services you know it's kind of like helpdesk stuff site support and a little bit of the stores here and there and what was really cool about field services because I got to network more not just the deliberate ops team you know I got to start talking to developers and app creators and all this fun stuff and it was really cool to is I started creating my personal brand and what I think my personal brand is like you know what you known for you know people started coming to me because you know I knew everybody

was I need to owns this application I'm going to brand this and you know I can became to go to you guys saying you know well if Jessica doesn't really know it she knows he does so that was part of my personal brand but the other thing about my personal brand is especially around at Macy's are going to discount I really like shoes so what's really funny is you know I work you know walking around and people will say hi to me and all that good stuff but I noticed especially lately you know the first thing people do is they look down at my feet before they look at my face just to see what

kind of see somewhere and just to prove that my home is like well I got super excited when I cut out of the speakers so of course I posted it book base and that was the first thing that people were spotted with was you know what's using it where so then it's like mister sounds fantastic you know it works from the mailroom all the way up to services there were opportunities that came along weapon was you know getting network operations and like this says life is all about bringing those new parts I wish the opportunity came up and I went for it you know I did want to expand my horizon and get out of field

services but unfortunately what came out to you I was not a good fit and I was kind of disappointed to me you know it's like okay so what can I do to do better you know what how can I change myself so that the opportunity comes up again in the future to make myself a bit fit for this so I had a conversation with their management teams and all that good stuff and got to know you have okay so let's do this they say can't work with colleges you know get into working more with the teens and I like it so sorry that's exactly what I did NGO services I kind of you know jumping

for the projects you know working on Wireless also working with you know deployment of you know a new security agent of course we all need more agents right so I got to what the mold is different teams at that point and that's when the opportunity actually came up efforts who knew came up to actually start working in information security and definitely I was you know after having gone through that first rejection I was like oh you know let's just go for it anyway and it actually panned out you know it was fantastic I did have one really bad interview and I was scared but it worked out and that was you know obviously awesome one of the first

questions that I got was the hardest for me to answer when I got into security was how did you do that you know how did you go from being in the mailroom and you know working your way through field and then finally security and I looked at the guy and I'm just like you know car like if you have kids I don't know how many you guys have kids but you know you got some what they got for dinner like how you do that I don't know that's kind of what I did with him but I you know recovered and said you know let's go ahead and set up a meeting next week for about 20 minutes

we can talk about it you know so that gave me a whole week to kind of figure it out myself you know self-reflection and trying to you know actually be able to communicate exactly how it was done so that's where you're standing on the shoulders of giants comes in it's like okay so now I've got like this unofficial mentee you know and getting into being a mentor amending of having mentees you know doing sponsorships peer sponsorships and all that fun stuff it's absolutely amazing to me about having mentor or having a mentee is how much more you learn not just with you know the technologies and everything that you're working with or the current job

but you actually get more of the communication skills and you get it into the soft skills and just you know learning about the business as a whole - it doesn't matter where you're at so you know obviously there's direct mentors and mentees right those are the people that you would go and sit down with and say okay how are you doing let's get this you know going let's guide you through your getting to where you want to be with your career but the other cool thing is there's indirect vendors out there and what I mean by interruptus people that don't even know that they're here and most these people can be found on social media we have a fantastic

fantastic security community all of our social media twitter is one of them you know there's a reddit community there's discord channels there's five channels and what's really great about the security community I'm sure you guys all know this is you know it's kind of a big family everybody's willing to help everybody else and prove and learn and grow and that's where I mean obviously opportunity comes up where you know there are opportunities everywhere you go that some of them might be right from your face you like a little play and other times you know you have to chase after them but you know they're always there regardless of whether it's just money new things or you're just looking

for a new cheese is always there obviously learning and growing there's security is so fast-paced and you guys again but it's you know always something new to learn you know whether it be through something that's so wonderful somebody posts online or you know there's all these really cool things I've ever seen and then the other thing yeah always tell people they're awesome you know one of the cool thing about you know working with security people is you know we all do awesome things and but how often do we say hey man thanks you're awesome so you know being able to tell somebody that and you know seeing that smile and they feel good about you know what they did is always pretty

awesome so that's all I've got but yeah so again I got on Twitter a sec Beth and I'm going to check out my LinkedIn I'm pepero game [Applause]