I’ve had some things on my mind so this will turn into a rant or stream of consciousness. If you feel called out on this post, it happens. Hopefully this will help some others out there.
See, I’ve spent the last 15 years, as I moved from a Network Engineer to a Security Engineer, trying to fit in with the CyberSecurity/InfoSec crowd. I am proud to be part of the community, proud to be one of the organizers of the Burbsec meetups in the Chicago area. I love welcoming new people into the community, but I am not a leader. I don’t and will never be looked at as a thought leader, a well known speaker, or anything else other than Shecky.
It is not that my thoughts and ideas are bad, I just am not part of the popular big names. Yes I occasionally get a speaking slot at a conference here or there, and I love doing it, but I am 50 years old with a 5 year old son who I adore, so I don’t do a lot of travelling to distant conferences. I mostly stay within a 4-6 hour drive from the Chicago area. When I was younger I didn’t have the money to do travel, and the whole traveling consultant thing and I had problems as a local network/server/desktop person before I moved into security. Add on that my writing skills are the weakest part of me, and you have a recipe for being just another face in the crowd, which seems to surprise some people because I talk with the more well known people in this field so it is assumed that I am one of them.
I’m not though. I am your everyday person(pronouns for those that ask are he/him). I try to keep my main twitter posts security related, unlike many who use it for expressing their political/social thoughts. Note that I said my main posts as I will reply to others political and social issues posts. Also realize that these other people get followers strictly for the non-security posts that these people make. There is nothing wrong with that at all and I commend them for trying to make the world a better place by pointing out what they see wrong with it.
I’m not well know as I have never written a piece of software that people use, written some huge idea that people have run with or started/founded a company. I have not run a conference, although I did offer to help build one but was told I wasn’t needed for that level. Instead I just volunteer for it, and a few others. I enjoy documenting the conferences by officially taking pictures for them(I was a professional photographer for a while back in the 90’s). I enjoy helping others out. I see cooperation as a way to improve, well, everything including security.
I love public speaking, but as I said my writing skills and lack of any big revelations tend to get my talks turned down at the CFP level, and I do let others look at and help me edit my CFPs before I put them in. I know my weaknesses. Those rejections hurt and I take them hard and sometimes personal even though they are not. That comes from rejections and being looked down on throughout my life going back to childhood. Like many I was picked on growing up. Adults shunned my thoughts, and people my own age, I didn’t fit in well with most of them.
I feel bad that new people to our community get picked on, and trolled. It is not the right way to do things. You should be treated with respect no matter you gender(or lack of gender), skin tone, religion, age, sexual orientation, or anything else. Yes I do speak this as a Jewish White Male, so from a position of privilege. I do what I can to use that privilege to help others.
Yet, here I am, still going, still trying to post stuff that will help people, and I will keep doing it not matter how often I seem to get the urge to just give up. I fought hard to get where I am. When I got back into computers in ’97 I looked to the world of security. I worked as a break/fix guy, on the helpdesk, as a system admin, a network admin, a network engineer. I had times where I was out of work due to contracts or being screwed over. When I finally got my first official security gig in 2015, I felt it was just the beginning. I dreamed of becoming a big name, or at least speaking at conferences and eventually keynoting them. Instead, I’m just another cog in the engine who is respected enough to chat with and know some of the big names. , and you know what, that is fine. There are more people like myself out there, and we are the ones who have to take the big thoughts and make them into reality.
We just need to be treated with kindness and respect, especially when breaking in. It is tough enough to get that first security job, especially the way that I went about doing it with no degree. The gatekeepers are tough, but persistence works and eventually will pay off. So be part of the community. Talk to others, no matter how big a name they are. Ignore the trolls, cause even if they are right about something, they will say it in a condescending way. Finally help pull up others. With how the world is today, we can each use more people in our corner.
