My ‘journey’ into the Security industry started well before I even submitted my application. It wasn’t at all linear either. Reflecting back to my teenage days, my first encounter with the industry was when I was at my aunt’s house and the TV was playing ‘Hackers,’ the movie with Angelina Jolie with the weird wig, and Johnny Lee Miller, yada yada. Anyway, once I saw the opening credits, I sat through the whole movie and just loved it. I couldn’t stop thinking about the movie for weeks, and I wondered if those people were actually real and if incidents like a fake DaVinci virus were even possible.

Then I completely forgot about it and moved on for about a year. Funny enough, I somehow ended up watching the movie at least once a year every year since then (so you can say I’ve seen the movie about 15-20 times). My favorite part of the movie is when Marc Anthony’s partner, Agent Bob, reads out loud the ‘Hackers’ Manifesto.’

This is our world now. The world of the electron and the switch; the beauty of the baud. We exist without nationality, skin color, or religious bias. You wage wars, murder, cheat, lie to us and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto.

This movie will always have a special place in my heart, but the intention in this series is to pull back the curtain behind what being in the Security industry means and explore the different ways you can contribute to the community.

This series will talk about Security Engineering in a large corporate setting, in a startup, and the different problems we are faced with. At the end, you can either be someone who protects the company or be one who brings them to their utter demise. No judgment. It’s cool. It’s okay. Let’s get started!