How to Excel in an InfoSec Career Beyond Technical Skills

I'm excited to give this talk I'm R britzel also known as Heisenberg the title of the talk and I understand I've got 30 minutes normally this is about an hour long time title of the talk fits really well into a number of the conversations that we've already had like in the panel uh session title of the talk is how not to suck at an infoset career hint it's not all about your technical skills and that's really true it is not all about the technical skills and so this talk is not going to be a technical talk this is going to be a talk talking about how people can can improve their ability to work well with

others and ability to succeed in a career and in life talking about how you do healthy self-contemplation how you connect with others and how you uh and and how you do how you communicate and what your conduct is so those are the kinds of things that I'm going to talk about today so contemplation conduct and connection and and uh we'll go ahead and and jump into some of the topics you've heard a lot about the different diversities of incomes or diversities of how you came into the cyber security field in my particular case uh it was gamma ray spectrometry was my gateway drug to becoming a hacker so I've been a practicing scientist I've been a cyber

security white hat hacker and current A Private Pilot a uh and glider flyer and I also am a consultant right right now so I got a wide range of background and also if you look as you're looking up here at me in the audience you notice that I've got a little gray okay I have I have just I'm I'm entering well into my seventh decade on the planet and with that has got some interesting things that you learn and that's one of the reasons why I really am excited about sharing some of this stuff because as I sit down and I reflect on it and I think back I've know known a lot of people

okay I have known the awesome and I have known the disaster you don't work at a place like Los Alamos without knowing some really awesome people you don't work with a bunch of pentesters without knowing some really awesome people you don't hire people at at a place like Los anges or at a pentesting team without knowing some really awesome people you also get to know your fair share of train wrecks and especially the train wrecks are the ones that are in my mind as I'm sitting there talking about these particular things and my favorite saying that I like to talk about when somebody comes to me and says oh I'd like to get into the pin test I'd like to get into

infos I like to blah blah blah blah blah and I and they say but I can't really I'm not really sure I can do it I say you know what I can teach an adult how to pentest I cannot teach an adult how not to be a jerk if you have got the right mindset and you've got the technical chops and you've got the determination you're you're the person for me I can teach you how to P so now let's get this out of the way let's get this slide out of the way you got to know some technical stuff you always got to start at the beginning right you got to know some technical

stuff understand what you're good at are you a generalist or a specialist whatever it is go with it run with it endorse it and pursue it with passion I can talk about some of these things but I've got a limited amount of time if you want to talk more about about what kinds of advice I would have for people who were just getting into it come hit me up but let me talk for a minute about passion there was a moment that was absolutely Galvanizing in my early technical career uh for anybody who went to college in engineering the first year Calculus class the first semester Calculus class was the lead out class right that's the one where they

separated all the engineers were the liberal arts Majors right so that was what that was a class and and I sucked at math I I was terrible I was sucked at all kinds of technical things I sat in that class and in Walk the professor he's this B guy with his wild bald with his wild bowl of hair and gray munching on this this sort of stumped out cigar wearing a Sarape with a motorcycle helmet under his arm and a calculus book that he literally had rubber bands around to keep the pages in and he walked in and he looked at the class he opened that calculus book and it was like he was sharing the secrets of God

it was so amazing because his passion for what he did absolutely fundamentally changed my life and I'll tell you this for free if you're talking about pursuing technical things you've already heard about mentoring if you're a mentor Mentor with all your heart if you are being mentored tell that Mentor how much that person means to you because that could be huge all right let's pivot to Fons now there's two types of fion there's leptons oh wait that's s sorry sorry sorry sorry different talk different okay the focus of this talk is going to be on the soft SK how many of you want to go back to the fir okay contemplation conduct and connection You' got to have an effective

balance and I'll tell you these three work together I hope to show you that why I hope show you why and how in a minute contemplation you got know who you are and you've got to go and constantly Benchmark who you are and I'm going to keep looking at the time and it's hard to balance between this this community tends to attract a lot of narcissists so you have to have a balance between narcissist all about them all about you know their hype up ego and that sort of thing but there's also people that are the echoist right there's the people who really have no contemplation about themselves and they're really only looking externally for any kind of a clue you have to find

a balance of this this is hard to do because nobody has an objective view of themselves but I'll give you a few helpful hints as we go down the road let me say this and this is particularly important the older I get you are not going to be okay if you can't take care of your health there are some things that are just never you're never you're never going to get past it I mean things will happen to you you cannot pass up on any opportunity to take care of your health physically and mentally if you're not okay mentally you're not going to be able to cope and you're not going to be able to work with those around you and

you're going to have a hard time succeeding and and one of the things that I can tell you about uh actually I'll save that to the next slide you have to actually spend time on this and this is where the balance between narcissism and eism really comes into play you have to have a healthy recognition there are times when you have to pour your energy out got it there are times when you have to stop and rest and recover whether that's physically or whether that's mentally those things have to happen you the people that I have seen that are the most successful have healthy self-confidence and they deal well with setbacks and and I'll get to the

financial well-being thing here in just a minute this dealing well with setbacks this is really hard I mentioned earlier that I'm A Private Pilot as it turns out this interesting thing about being a Private Pilot is your success is really measured on how well you can land the airplane right if you land the airplane in a bad way it can go very badly early on in my pilot career I had this issue where I kept starting to land the plane about a foot in the air and it would drop onto the ground and I was really irritated with myself and one time the instructor I landed and I took back off to go around and go through that again

and I was grouching about that Landing back there behind you and he said that's over that's done it turns out Aviation is a lot like life it is going to keep moving forward inexorably when you're in the airplane you're moving forward you don't have time to sit back and think about that Landing that you made back there except to look at it and say I flared too early lesson learned captured it move on it's done that is one of the things that you have to do or else some of these things or else some of the dwelling on prior mistakes is not going to be it's not going to go well for you I didn't really know anywhere else I

I built up to it better in a longer talk but the financial well-being take care of your financial well-being because that is something that as you get older that gets harder and harder takeaways maintain a regular self a regular practice of self-reflection the priorities physical and mental health Financial wellbeing and then the others if you lack in these areas seek help it is okay to seek help get self-help get input from others and get therapy from needed connection and and and conduct and connection will be impacted by this and especially the connection one time I had a person call me up and they say hey are you okay I'm like well I don't know why why do you

ask you are saying and doing things that are completely out of character and I stopped and I thought and I thought you know what he's right I am not in a good mental place right now I am exhausted physically and I'm not in a good mental place I had an accountability group an accountability partner that would take me aside and say are you okay if not you need to spend some time with that find those accountability people when you trust them make absolute sure that you listen to those folks all right again I'm sorry I got to move on fast because I don't want to I don't want to uh end up missing some of these things and I

got to really talk about all three topics because they tie together conduct conduct in this context means the actions the things that you actually end up doing in the Behavior now this is a huge topic area but one of the things that I am going to focus on is primarily in the area of morality guiding principles truthfulness being genuine and these things drive your reputation if you fail at these your reputation is kind of in the toilet and that's going to make it very difficult for you to have a really highly successful career here is this this one slide I'm going to actually pause I'm going to really spend a little bit of time on this because of all of the

topics I mean I believe in all three of these Concepts or else they wouldn't be in the slide all of these topics this is the one thing that I want everybody to really sit down and think about your integrity will be challenged it doesn't matter where you are in this career especially if you're in a career of trust and position of trust if you're in a place where you have access to sensitive information if you're in a government job or or in a job where you have access to Hippa or pii or something like that I can absolutely promise you that you're Integrity will be challenged and you have to be ready for it because

what doesn't happen and mark my words this doesn't happen you don't wake up in the morning and stretch and yawn and get your cup of coffee and then you know you pull up uh the phone and it says oh by the way a reminder your integrity will be challenged at 2:15 this afternoon that never happens you're be bopping along minding your own beeswax and doing stuff and all of a sudden you find a serious mistake that you are somebody else made and it could have absolutely life-changing consequences for someone now what do you do because the ramifications of that mistake are huge and it's going to be painful and it's going to be difficult and it's going to

be challenging where is your integrity in this you're asked the question you know he has I'm just going to pick a random person he comes to me and he asks me a question and and and I know what he needs to hear and it is not Pleasant message do I tell him I know what he wants to hear but do I tell him what he needs to hear because I just want to be kind of easy and get through this someone's shared something he shared something in confidence with me and she over there said hey you know I'm really worried about this guy can you kind of tell me where he's at oh well now wait a

minute it would be a good thing because she's worried and she's actually genuinely concerned but he shared shared some concerns that he's having because they were in confidence and he shared them with me because he trusts me now what do I do where is my Integrity in that decision you could cheat the system here a little bit how many of you guys are remote workers yeah a lot of us are remote workers how many of you guys could cheat the system and nobody would ever know where's your integrity that these things your integrity absolutely will be challenged so let me give you a few half kind yes ma'am a little bit of extra time I'm sorry a littleit I have a

little bit of extra time I'm I'm being told to chill you but thank you no appreciate it great okay good all right no actually thank you very much I appreciate it practices to consider how do you handle this because like I said if you've got some of these circumstances that are coming up you need to know how to handle it and you need to be ready because as I said earlier you're not going to have enough time to prepare and think in this particular challenge I will respond in the following way that you're going to have to be ready ahead of time are there clear rules that you've agreed to if there are clear binding rules that you

have agreed to if you have signed a rule of behavior that's pretty clear if you have S if you have signed non-disclosure agreement that's pretty clear if you've signed security clearance paperwork that's pretty clear you have very clear guidance that you need to fall down to or that you need to refer to and you know what you have to do if somebody has shared something with you in confidence you need to sit down and talk about that for a little bit and ask them ahead of time are you sharing this with me in confidence can I share this with somebody because I'm concerned about you who can I share this with is this okay you have to be open and honest and

transparent about it and help others by telling them what is and confidence and be consistently truthful you heard in one of my earlier remarks I talked about this accountability peer this is something that I actually felt very strongly about and I would actually encourage you if you have some folks around you that you really trust remember you need to judge their character just like people are looking at your character an accountability reference an accountability peer somebody that can look at you and you have given them permission there were three people in my former company that I actually had this conversation with and I said you three folks I talked to them individually of course but I said you

folks have the permission to take me aside and say dude you're crashing and let me know that something is not right let me know that what I'm doing is not okay let me know that they are concerned about my behavior I have those three accountability peers in my former group because as it turns out one of those guys called me and he was absolutely spoton when that pays dividends I cannot tell you how absolutely cool it is so takeaways you're not going to be successful at this all the time nobody's Integrity is 100% perfect there's too much gray area do the best you can I can tell you the times I'm most satisfied with the

outcome is when I can sit down and say that was is incredibly painful but at the end of the day I can close my eyes and sleep in peace because I did the right thing even though it was painful use your connections to help guide you in benchmarks contemplate more your okay I always tell this joke and I I went rushed into it too fast my handle is Heisenberg okay Heisenberg schro and J and own are this is all hard content so we got to take a break here for a second Heisenberg and home are all out for a drive one day Heisenberg's driving he gets pulled over by the cops and the cops comes up to Heisenberg and he says

hey do you know how fast you were going and Heisenberg says no but I know precisely where I am the cop says you were doing 120 km an hour Heisenberg says dang it now I'm completely lost the cop thinks okay this is kind of weird he goes and he searches the car he comes back and he says you know you have a dead cat in the trunk and Sher says we do now you jerk the cop has had enough of these guys and so he decides to go ahead and arrest the group own resists you saw that okay I had I had another physics I was working on another physics joke about ruford and boore and

it I just kept chasing myself around the circle and couldn't get to the nucleus the Jo sorry okay's over here CH he gets it right that that was a little bit that's reachy for a little bit okay connection connection I'm going to talk about your relationship with others and is a huge area but one of the things that I'm going to really focus on is communication okay you have to learn to communicate you have to learn to communicate one onone you have to learn to communicate written smoken and spoken and small groups and a part of that is listening effectively but let me focus on writing I can I tell you the number of technical people that have said oh I

speak at writing I'm sorry personal opinion old guy I'm starting to get more and more opinions that's not an excuse you can get better your writing can be effective you have to write stuff down if for nothing else you'll not always be here right somebody is going to follow behind you and look at your work and understand what you did you you need to write it down and you need to be able to leave some kind of a legacy behind on that organize your thoughts communicate them clearly and concisely and remember and every this is the this is the famous email problem remember that the written word does not carry the context of the spoken word you can see a lot or you can

tell a lot about what I'm trying to convey by looking at the context by looking looking at my face you're not going to get that out of my email so you have to provide the context when you're doing when you're doing the spoken word when you're doing a written word you have to learn to speak in a variety of situations you have to learn to speak one onone you have to learn to speak in groups you have to learn to speak to those who you are who report to you if you're becoming a manager you have to learn to speak effective to those above you a story about my dad real quick um one day when I was

becoming a manager my dad said uh one thing that he realized as he wound up his career he said that the people that worked for him thought much more highly of him than the people he worked for and I looked at him and I said that's backwards that's just fundamentally wrong and fast forward life fast forward life fast forward life he was absolutely right because the point was was that he was able to communicate and the people that he that reported to him knew that he absolutely was there to support them not a pushover but he absolutely was there to support him he was a man that they could trust they could communicate with him and then he had their back when

he talked to the people above it was the truth it may not have been what they wanted to hear but it was communicated respectfully and not everybody takes that way but as it turns out I became a manager just exactly like like him say what you're going to say say it concisely and stop I can't tell you the number of times that people start talking and they go over and over and over they keep going and keep going keep going and then they go back to the original point they reemphasize the original point then they dude stop talking okay practice few practices few takeaways listen actively in a conversation you're not listening to be able to give the rort you're

listening to try and understand what that person is telling you success is not just blurting something out with a de Gaff attitude and I don't care what happens think about the message that you're trying to get to somebody ask get feedback is this making sense what do you think how can I improve is this message coming across what is the message you got oh that wasn't what I intended let me refine it listen to yourself This is actually is something that's really hard you know the thing that just absolutely makes me cringe more than uh more than um a really bad presentation is listening to my own presentations I'm just like dude um organize your thoughts say what

you have to say see how this message is being received if it doesn't come naturally work on all right here's Here's the final slide so all of these things are interesting and I threw a lot lot of content that you in the last oh I don't know um 60 micro years or so by the way micro years about 32 and 1 half seconds that's you guys get that for free there's no ex trou from that um as you're sitting there looking each one of these things the only way you can work this effectively is to take these three in cooperation with each other contemplation how you self-analyze is going to be actualized by listening to the connect by having

connection with people and understanding how you're coming across and being received by them and by looking at your conduct if your conduct is not who you are that's because something's wrong up at that upper bubble so those things work together same kind of a thing with connection if you don't have the kind of confidence with in who you are and understanding who you are when you try and connect with person they got nothing to work with because they don't know who you are because you're not expressing your genuine self and then if your conduct is not conducted with Integrity there's no connection there I don't know about you but if I can't trust somebody I'm not

going to open up to it same kind of a thing with the conduct mistakes will be made go back to the first bubble contemplate where did I go wrong and then fix that problem and if you're sitting there looking and thinking wait a minute why is it that I can't make a connection maybe you should look back over here at this conduct bubble and say am I the jerk you know and if the answer is yes oh guess what you go back up to this first bubble that's how these things all work together all right thank you very much I know this is not a typical infos seex security con thank you for being with me um I have probably

just a couple minutes but I actually want to try and give a little bit of time back to the next speaker time for one or two questions or comments yes sir go ahead here I yeah go ahead it's on okay so the the three C's the conduct uh connection and uh and contemplation yes thank you um so these These are kind of these are Concepts but they're they're about action right like if you if you're in a room with other people but do anything there's nothing toate there's nothing to know go on so I I assume that you're actually trying to apply this like to to your business work to your private personal life all that like how how do

you how do you see this as being likeor those other parts how do you see this is being incorporated into the other parts yeah I I I think I'm not quite sure how I not quite sure exactly how to answer your question I see these as action I see these as actions yes but I also see these things as fundamental concepts because it's very hard when you're looking at life and you're looking at your career and you're looking at how you're going to be successful it's very hard to get a handle on these things right it's that's a very abstract concept and so for somebody like me with an engineering background I have to have

and going all the way back to the story of my math professor I have to have a framework I have to have a structure whereby I can sit down and evaluate these things and this is how I've developed that structure and that contemplation part is that part where I do need self-reflecting outside of what all is going on and that part about conduct is where I am indeed benchmarking what my how the things that I'm doing are landing and the part about the communication is indeed about that connection that I'm making with people so I probably didn't really understand understand your question but if you want to pursue it more I'm down at Cyber skills labs and so come down and let's

talk because it' be fun to have a uh philosophic conversation one more and then I'm going to give them these folks their mic back one more oh I'm sorry yes go ahead here you want to or just shout Inspirations from books or thinkers that that got you into this subject uh yeah I'll work with the bsides organizers to give you the slides because there is a lot more content that I didn't really get to go through his question was do I have any information about specific books or resources or guides actually to be honest with you I don't I know there are a lot of books out on these various topics I can tell you the most effective resource I have

found is people who I respect that model this when I find people that I respect that model this I soak as much wisdom out of them as I possibly can now again I had an unfair Advantage I worked at Los Alamos I worked with some of the most brilliant people on the planet sorry s you you guys got some really smart place too okay but but but that is really the secret and going back to the talk about my math professor I ended up taking every class that Professor taught because I so Valu him as a model to help guide but that's an excellent question thank you guys very much for putting up with this talk I really appreciate