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Embark on a journey with me as Ricardo Hunt, a shining light in the cybersecurity realm, opens up about his remarkable ascent from a humble beginning in Rustin, Louisiana, to a senior SOC analyst. It's a tale that gives a voice to the silent struggle of imposter syndrome and the monumental shift that occurs with a drive for personal betterment. Ricardo's transformative narrative from the aisles of Lowe's to a fourfold increase in income is not just inspiring; it's a blueprint for how dedication and the right mindset can lead to success even when the odds seem insurmountable.
We delve into the essence of starting a tech career and how pivotal coaching can be, with Ricardo's experiences complementing my own reflections on unchallenged academic days and the profound impact of mentors. Our conversation meanders through the landscapes of career transitions, the power of strategic networking, and the serendipitous openings that can arise from community ties. Listeners will find both motivation and practical advice on overcoming challenges, embracing the steep learning curve in cybersecurity, and the undeniable worth of diving headfirst into demanding environments.
Closing out this enlightening exchange, we turn to the criticality of vigilance in protecting AI startups from cyber threats and the indispensable value of networking for professional growth. Each chapter peels back layers of the cybersecurity onion, revealing intricacies from SOAR systems to the impact of cybersecurity awareness on the younger generation. Prepare to be armed with a wealth of knowledge and the encouragement to conquer the tech sphere, whether you're amidst job searches, contemplating a career network, or yearning to grasp the roles and tools in cybersecurity.
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00:00 - Navigating Cybersecurity and Career Growth
07:31 - Navigating Childhood and Mentorship in America
14:49 - Transitioning From Lows to IT
21:59 - Success and Challenges in Cybersecurity
29:18 - Challenges and Growth in Cybersecurity
41:17 - Insights on Security Operations and Response
47:20 - Building a Career Network in Cybersecurity
55:01 - Career Growth and Salary Negotiation
01:01:32 - Understanding Cybersecurity Roles and Tools
01:10:46 - Importance of Security in AI Startups
01:21:50 - Job Searching and Dating Mindset
through the textual talk podcast where we talk about all things related to tech. I want to ask yourself a question have you constantly been trying to get into cybersecurity but have been struggling to no avail? Well, in this episode we'll be meeting with a former client of mine that has not only doubled his income, but we've done it twice, so essentially we have quadrupled his income. And in this episode we'll kind of talk about the different things that happen when you get into cybersecurity in an entry-level role and how hard that can be and how much imposter syndrome you face just going through that situation. We'll also discuss on should you invest in your career and why it's a good thing to find good coaches to invest in to get your career going along in the right direction. And we'll talk on some security topics too, when it comes to phishing, qr codes, different things with bank frauds and much, much more. Let's get into the episode and remember, if you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please leave us a review and share out the podcast to help us out in the podcast download analytics. Thank you, welcome back to the Tech Show Talk podcast, where I'm your host HD. It's episode 122.
And we got a great guest for you guys today. He's a former guest and a former client of mine. His name is Ricardo Hunt. He is a senior sock analyst. We're gonna talk about how he got into the field today. But if you're watching this on YouTube, you know what to do hit, subscribe, hit R on the notification bell so you can be notified when I'm dropping all content. And if you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please leave us a review, follow the podcast, share it out for those who need to hear this good message today. But, ricardo, what's going on? Man? What's up, brother? What's up? It's been a long time. It was what I think. I was moving back to Dallas when we first hooked up, so I wanna say that might've been 2021 sometime.
Yeah, it was. I felt like it was 2020 or 2021. It was like after COVID.
I know it was after COVID, it was 2021, because I was moving back and that's when I kinda had just well, I hadn't started like in 2020, but that's when I started picking up more and more steam and stuff and I think I had just started like the pod. But before we like get into that, can you briefly just introduce yourself to the listeners and the watchers?
Yeah, so, man, I'm from Louisiana and, rustin, you went to La Tech and I grew up in that small city and I grew up on the east side of town, so it wasn't the best side of town. And, man, I ended up leaving high school when I went to go play soccer in Kansas City and then I moved to Dallas. After that I didn't stay long in school. School wasn't for me. I felt like man, it was wasting my time, I had to pay for my own things and so I felt like man, I gotta go and do my own thing and I can't be wasting my time at school.
And so with that I was working at Lowes and then Lowes had I was there for probably like three years or something like that four years, can't remember and then it had like a layoff and it was called company restructure and I had some friends who were in tech and they were like dawg, you need to jump in. You know you need to get in. And I was like man, I'm not smart enough for this stuff. I remember I said that and then they were like man, like dude, just jump in. And there was one guy who really helped me with my mindset and he always stayed on me and he told me I could do it, and so, yeah, that's kind of how I got here and how I, you know, I didn't tell how I got started, but that's kind of. You know a little bit about my background.
Yeah, that's cool Cause I mean they can go back to the old episodes. They want to find out more about that. But I want to ask you real quick because you said something key. You said something about mindset and I want you to touch on briefly. I guess you said you stayed on the East Side of Rustin. I don't even know what the East Side of Rustin is. All I know is about into my junior year at Tech. That's when I started going. I forgot where it's at, but I used to go get my haircut at Nappy Cuts.
Nappy Cuts. I think I can't remember where Nappy Cuts is, but why? Two cuts is right over on the East Side. I can't remember where Nappy Cuts is.
I couldn't take the street, I just like. So the dude I used to stay in what was it, what's it? University Park. I stayed in Thatcher. There was apartments right there, like right across from, really, the baseball field. I stayed right there at Tech and the one of the guys I was my neighbor, his cousin, was the barber at Nappy Cuts. I was like man who cut your hair, Because back then I used to go just not have haircuts and go back to the street before they get a haircut. Yeah, because I was just like I don't know where to go to get a cut and I would remember I had seen some areas of Rustin that weren't the best.
But I actually wanted to talk, ask you a little bit about that, because one of my questions I was thinking about asking you was we were going to talk about money and I was going to talk about how. I didn't want to presume that you came from money, but I wanted to assume that I know for a fact. I think it's, and I got to double check this. I'm at the Google it but I think per capita, rustin is probably like one of the richer cities in Louisiana and you see people like with money out there. They just out there retiring. They just don't even know Cause my roommate at Tech, mason, his dad used to play for the 49ers so they were staying in Rustin and stuff like that. But yeah, can you talk touching that?
Yeah, so I actually, you know, speak about that. I did come from poverty, like you know drugs and you know family members and, like you know, just a lot of dysfunction. And yeah, so you know I did come from that. But you know, for me the mindset was I knew I wanted different, I could. I see my, I saw my siblings like they didn't graduate high school and I was like I knew I wanted different, I was a class clown, I wanted to act up, you know. And so I don't know, I felt like I wanted different, but I didn't know how to get different.
And I think a lot of people find themselves in that shoe where they, like man, like I want different, but I'm so used to the same mindset, like everybody around me thinks the same. And then it wasn't until I started associating myself with people who were different. You know, they thought different, they grew up different. So you talk about resting, like, like I started to hang around people, and mainly it was my Christian community, because I became a believer, and so I started hanging around Christians and they thought different, and a lot of them because of resting, like they were in a different position than we were. They may have, my friends were, and so of course it was they. You know, they had money and stuff like that, and so it was. It was kind of there where I started to kind of see I was like, oh you know, I don't have to do what everybody else does, you know.
Yeah, so that you were saying that. I had another question too is I was going to ask how do? Because if you, if you want to be honest, you don't typically see a lot of black kids play soccer Cause number one I think there is a barrier to entry there when it comes to price most of the time to like actually succeed in soccer. So I wanted to ask you quickly how did you get into soccer and how did you get good at it to where you can actually go play pro in in Kansas city?
Well, I didn't pay, I didn't play pro, I just played in college.
But hey, listen somebody was making some money somewhere, cause I mean, now those probably guys probably gives like some small NIL deals for being in school.
So yeah, but the thing is is that soccer is actually pretty cheap all around the world because people just get a ball and they just play, and a lot of people come from poverty that play. But in America is different, yeah, and so I think it's gate kid, yeah, yeah, in America it's like everybody's sending like kids there. You know the soccer mom, quote unquote everybody's sending kids there because that's what you do when you're young and so, and it's all money. You know you got to have money to do that and so when I got in I was I was like a sophomore in high school and I used to play, like you know, three different sports Cause I wanted to stay active man Cause I was either I was going to be going to go do some drugs or like be around drugs or something like that.
So you pretty much and I should have actually asked you this question, cause I wanted to get my therapist back and this is the things that you start noticing becoming a parent and everything else, so just life and wisdom is. Do you think the reason you were being a class clown?
because you maybe were not receiving that attention that you were getting home, my dad stayed like five minutes from me and like we didn't really have a relationship, like talking about it all. And then you know, my mom, she was on drugs, so it was just, I mean, it was just different you know, Like and for me, yeah, it was a lot of the, the attention Like I just wanted.
I was really attention to you know deficit really, and so I was seeking attention. I remember I went to the alternative school in Rustin and then I started being good because I got attention for being good.
So I was like I was like Did any of your teachers ever cause? I like I always say this, I'm a real established believer in this During. I think the kids are different now and schools different now. But I came from a time where we actually had some quality teachers and the teacher wasn't always calling my parents, even though I got in trouble a lot. I wanted to get in trouble a lot because of talking, you could say.
In a sense I wasn't really necessarily a class clown, but if I was done I was just talking too much or maybe disrupting class and it really just came from just not being challenged. I was never challenged out through grade school with work. Work was never hard and I told my mom all the time. I said I should have either skipped me up or put me in a different school. I got so much trouble for that Cause. We get on the subject of the whoopings and stuff like that. I said mom, none of them, things like, made me act. But I eventually just grew out of like talking so much and getting in trouble.
But I was like if I would have had more work and been challenged to do and actually have to study, I probably would have did better and not gotten in much trouble. And every podcast I always say, but look, all that talking, I did now look what I'm doing now. So it's kind of like that foreshadowing. It's like he probably going to do something where he has to talk for a living or whatnot. But did you have, like a teacher, that kind of either pulled you the side or try to say something like you know, hey, you know if everything okay or anything going on at home? I think, because a lot of teachers can see, like this kid is really smart, but they are acting out and it doesn't go hand in hand.
Man Rustin is such a good community. Like they they would set me up with like different people that would literally come in and they would be specifically assigned to me. And these were outside people, they were not a part of the school or nothing like that, and so they would come by and they would take me. They would, you know, do different things with me and just try to you know mentor and type of stuff.
Yeah, mentor, but really it was my coaches, man, my coaches. They really poured that life into me and I started working with them. They started teaching me, you know, principles of life and those were huge. And, oh man, and I remember I had a black coach and he was like he, he had a wife, he loved his family. I had never seen that before. I was like what? Like how you know? Like you know, and he listened to Christian Hip. I was like whoa, what are you doing? Like I've never heard anything like this. And so it was just crazy. But in multiple coaches throughout my time, yeah, yeah, that's cool.
I always tell people too that a lot of things, especially when it comes to men I can't talk about being a woman because I'm a man A lot of it comes to exposure. When you grew up with I grew up with seeing multiple successful marriages. My parents are still together. My mom was never calling around seeing my dad was coming home. My dad was there every night, like I always tell people I don't remember the time where I'd never seen him. So I always tell people, like, what you're exposing, what you see a lot of times is how you start shaping on what you see the world as and like different aspects of that.
So I used to like watch different things from multiple people, from my dad to my uncles, how they treat my aunts, how they treat my cousins, so all those different things. You can kind of pull what you want from different people and so you can try to be your version of whatever you want to be, and so I think that's important and that's what we see now. And I know people like, hey, we don't get into it, we're gonna get into it. But I'm also trying to reach somebody that may not have ever been had somebody to talk to. But we see now, when some of the things that were men or whatever, a lot of them have not had their male presence in their life because they were primarily raised by their mom whether it's her fault, the man for whatever it is, but that's what we're seeing. So some of them are unfortunately like too far gone to help now. But it does start with the kids. So, to get to my point, I think this is why a lot of women try to put their kids in sports. Because of that.
On Twitter before, we talked about how playing a sport gives you intangibles that you just don't get out of just going to school, like I played football for the four years in high school as well, so it's like I got intangibles from that I know about.
Like football, like everybody talk about Teen Gangs, football is like the ultimate teen sport. You can't just I mean, unless you're like on offense and you're a QB and you're finna just be selfish, and most of the time you can't if they're not blocking. I mean you can try to make some out of nothing, but other than that you can't do much. So I learned a lot from that, working out a how to go ahead, and I gotta wake up every day and go to the weight room. Now we gotta go to practice. It's 100 degrees running these mouths, like all these different things that's in your body remembers that. So now we shift that focus and we get into the mental part of it when we come to getting into a tech. So I think you were already set up with the transferable and tangible skills to succeed here. You probably just didn't know it because you didn't know, you didn't have exposure to anything and like tick related early on.
Yeah, and I think what do you believe is possible? You know, like you talked about seeing and you know, kind of like you know, you kind of gravitate to what you know, you kind of pick different pieces but you've never seen it. Then how can you believe it? And so, like I would believe the word that people would tell me, so like if I knew you had credibility and you know, like I would believe that I could do this because somebody spoke to me and they said that you can do it. And you know, even if you got to go further than that and now, as an adult, on my own, you know, and not necessarily having you know different mentors I can believe it because I got experience, like I got. No, I can do it because I seen it before and maybe I didn't know that like it was this specific thing, but if it's the next thing, I know I can do it because I've done it before. I got the experience to tell me I can do it.
You know, I believe you know, yeah, definitely, and so now we're going to get into. So you leave loads from the restructuring. Look, I've been in the restructure I just talked about it on one of the other podcasts and just walking in and they got the sheet say, okay, sign this. Like at least in my instance, I got a severance. But so you say that you met some friends that say, yo, you can get into IT. Let's talk about that transition of getting into IT and what you did and how did you do it.
Yeah, I was kind of like pedaling back and forth, kind of skating in and out of it, and so like I was, you know, I heard that you, hey, you need to study for these different certifications, and so like I was kind of in and out trying to learn about what a computer is and stuff like that, but I never really took it serious. But it was when the restructuring happened because I had to make a decision. I remember my friend told me he said are you going to keep working these dead end jobs or are you going to take a leap? Like you got nothing to lose? And so I like they tried to give me a job making less than what I was making, you know, in their restructuring process. And I was like, nah, I'm good. And so I like I was jobless and I just hit, like I think, pro TV or something like that.
I T-PRO TV.
Yeah, I T-PRO TV and like I consumed it I'm talking about like I was in there consuming it. I was like every single day, I was just churning it out and then, like I was trying to find a job too, and so I ended up landing a job, probably like a month and a half later. And what year is this? This was probably 2020, I believe 2021, 2020, something like that. 2020, probably yeah, so, yeah. So that's kind of how the initial jump into IT happened. We're getting from lows to IT.
Like I was doing a lot of networking and one of the guys in my church he was a director of IT, and so I was like yo, like you know, when I found that out, I was studying every day. I was already studying every day and then, like I was able to, I found him, cause I was networking in the church, and then he was like I was like, hey, man, can I, you know? Like just give me, can I get an interview, you know? And so, man from there, it was like he hit me up probably a couple of weeks later and the rest was history really yeah.
so during that time were you at church and resting or were you out here?
I was out here, I was all in Dallas, I was all in, yeah, dfw area.
Got it, so you moved from Kansas city to.
Dallas, yeah to DFW, yeah.
Okay, like most of us, like I would have like if I had known you back then, the only thing I would say was, like hey, you know, you probably can move to Bojure and possibly get your IT job, cause GDIT is there. Like that's probably the only thing I would have said. I was, like well, check GDIT out If you didn't want to come like straight, start from zero. And so I believe, if I remember, if memory serves me correct, you were working at a school or the school district.
Yeah, I was working in the school district. Yep, which school district was it? That was Southlake. Okay, yeah, southlake ISD yeah, that's crazy.
Carroll ISD. Kenneth and I were just talking about Southlake. He's like man. How do these people? How about his money out here?
Dude, yeah, it's a different monster out there with the resources that they have.
So when you were. So how I'm trying to see, I can't remember cause, like I said, it's been so long cause we say it's like 2021. So it was almost three years.
It's been four years, bro, Cause I remember. I mean, it's been four years I probably can find it's been four bro, Cause I like I think I remember it's four. It's been four, bro, you sure it's, or three and a half.
I think it's been three and I think it's 2021. Cause I remember I didn't start my official. I did a pilot episode of my podcast late 2020 with justice, and then in 2021 is when I actually started a podcast. So that's how I kind of chronicolized everything.
But I met you before the podcast, because it wasn't the. You didn't have a podcast yet, because this was back in the gap when your prices was like $50.
I was like yeah, I remember that, but I'm trying to. I got a. I was supposed to transfer all my stuff from my old outlook over so I could see my emails, but I think Calendly still has like the information on when I talk to people. But I was sure it was like early 2021. Maybe, I think it was. I think it was early 2021 for the simple fact that right after I helped you, I ended up moving back.
So Okay, yeah, yeah, I do remember it. So yeah, yeah, it was early 2021.
So I remember that, like you hit me up like out of the blue and I think I actually like yo. Where did you find out about me Like?
bro, you know what happened was I was trying to pass those certs, those little, those competeer certs, right, and you, you and they spring were the only ones that really had information out, like, and you were just like I was trying to figure out how to navigate in the field, right, I was trying to figure out how to pass those certs, and so they spring, and you were all about navigating the field, and so I just ate and consumed all that stuff, and then I was like yo, like I can actually get in touch with this guy. Yeah, that was my thing. I was like I can, you know, like reach out to him and like actually like message him. I was like, oh man, this is by far, this is it, you know?
Yeah, and I always tell people that I'm able to tell what clients of mine are going to be successful from, like our first encounter, versus who's going to need a little work. And it's always comes from obedience, and not in the obedience of fact of just listening to me because I said so, but obedience and knowing that, hey, he's not going to tell me anything, that's not going to help me Like. So I think you got that early on because we did your resume. We have to come to the stage. We did your resume, or actually you did it and it gave it to me.
It was trash man. Everything I did was trash and I was sending it to you and I was kind of getting like, I guess, free help. Like you were at the point to where you were kind of helping me and I wasn't paying the price that I should have been paying and you were just like I guess I just wanted it and you seen it and you were like yo, I want to help you get to where you need to be, and so it was pretty dope, like you were just telling me everything to do and I was like, but the thing, is you did it.
Yeah.
That's what I'm saying, like everybody doesn't have. Like, like I said, you've gone on a day spring I met day spring in a pandemic. Young 18 year old kid asked me about hey, how do this, isn't this? I'm saying, hey, do this, isn't this? He listens go get the internship, gets a full time, comes to work with me at Optif. So it's the same way. Like I always tell people you just listen, like I'm in a decade, like I'm going to tell you things I've learned along the way and things I know that will help you be better than me early on in your career. And all the people who listen, y'all are much better than I was early on into your career versus when I started my career. So I'm like, if y'all listening, listen to that, like when I'm telling you things, it's to be better than me. I'm not the type of person that's trying to keep you down, so I still remain the big man. That's not what it is. I've always did that to try to help you guys, because to be told, I need y'all to be in for the next generation, so you guys can help them, so you guys could be the directors, the C levels, the managers. Help more black people get in, because that's the hardest part you go through interviews. You'll start to be able to count on your finger how many people you interview with that kind of looks like you. So that's another reason as well, even for the whole platform and everything.
But also the funny thing is I bring up your story a lot. We've seen you've seen some of the crazy stuff about since you got in to now. Some people are doing some absurd marketing when it comes to getting into cybersecurity and I've told people on Twitter. I said I can advertise, hey, I can help you get into cybersecurity in one week, because technically with you it's like a week and a half or whatever. But I was like that was an anomaly, like that just happened, guys, timing, you got on. You did that about me. Post on LinkedIn was a video which I need to tell them to do. I just said, hey, post on LinkedIn. He went and did a whole video and after that he gave me a call. He was like yo, I just talked to a critical start and they went off with me. I'm like the only person with the certs was I forgot, tell that story like how you got the job a critical start.
Yeah, it was like man, like you were coaching me through the process and you were like, hey, do all these things. And so I went in and I did all those things and like it was like, like you know, come in with notes and you know, ask good questions, and you know here's some questions and you know, just kind of tailored to your style and to what you desire, and man from there it was like it was just basic things really and it was, yeah, it was basic, it was all basic, but it worked, you know. Yeah.
I mean, when we come to anything, whether we can keep it sports related or fixing the basics of doing like using a screwdriver lefty, loosey, righty, tidy. That's a basic, but it's still gonna screw the screw in when you do it at the end of the day.
Oh, and another thing. This is so I forgot. So this is actually what happened. So there's a backstory to it. Yeah, so I was following everybody on that critical start. I was like you know, I'm like on LinkedIn. I was like I'm gonna follow everyone, you know everybody at critical start. That was my goal. So I did that and there was one guy that reached back out to me and I think he was like he worked at Splunk, he was previously at Splunk and he was the architect at critical start and he came from Splunk and so he was like hey, man, you looking for a job. Like he said something like that because I was following everybody from the company and he was like hey, you looking for a job and or something like that, I can't remember it. And I was like I took him out to eat.
I was like hey, I remember that. Yeah, I remember that.
And we like had dinner at like BJs or something like that, and I paid for his dinner and everything. And I didn't even know this guy and I just was like, hey, let's just like, let's just go. And I don't even think he said he mentioned like, do you want a job? He just kind of reached back out to me and I went and we had a conversation. I got to know how he started his career and we just had conversations. I didn't know this guy at all. And then he was like yo, I got you, like I'm gonna put a word in for you so you can get an interview, and that was it. And that was really what kind of propelled me with that situation. And that was even some situations that you had built for me. That was still lingering in a background in case that didn't work out. So that was a lot that was building for me, even though I was just in like two. It was like a two week burn. That was it.
Yeah, but I always tell people the people don't believe me because once it happens for them they're gonna like he ain't lying. I always tell people networking is the equalizer and I always used to before Deontay Water got washed. I was like Deontay Water not the best boxer, but if he laying that right hand, you might go to sleep. Networking is your right hand Because if you get the referral from the right person on a team and they like your personality, you are really close to possibly getting that job, especially if you know your stuff, because at the end of the day, everybody want to work with people they want to work with. If you're placing a work with, they want to work with you If you act like you know it all. There's times where the smartest person does not always get the role Because your job may be technical in nature but you may also have to interact with clients.
Yeah, fags.
And so if they can't trust that soft skin, you or you scaring clients off. I've seen the different stories about people getting in the shower matches with clients and stuff like that. That's not a good look.
Yeah, so that's pretty cool, and even leaving critical start, well, we're going to get into the critical start. I was going to tell you about like.
We're going to get into it, we're going to lay it out on the platform Because, guys, I haven't told you like when you guys see the title of this, you're going to be kind of wondering, like how the story behind this title come up. So I'm laying out the first part of it Now. I want you to talk about two things. One, because at this time I think all you had was the trifecta from come to you, right.
Yeah, I had the trifecta. Maybe to see why I say I can't even remember. Okay.
I think he had like three or four come to you but he went from. I think what were you making at the school district?
Dude, I was probably making like 27, 27, probably 37, something like that.
You went from 27 to $30,000. And then what would you make it when you went to critical start?
I was making like maybe, like 67 probably, and that's what the bonus.
Yeah, but no, now, mind you guys, this is three years ago and there's still some people that don't even make $67,000 right now. But can you imagine how the possibilities and everything opened up in your mind and expand when you realize, hey, I've been an entry level role and I'm making $67,000. And I want to? And that's why I want to touch in on when you said you had the Christian friends saying, hey, no, you can do this thing. Big Is that the moment when you realized that, hey, I can do this and there's money in this career for me.
Yeah, but I said that in the beginning though, so I believe that in the.
I know you believe it, it's good to believe it, but when it actually happens it's another switch. That goes on.
Yes, that's true, that's true. But I remember and one of my Christian friends he worked at Cinec and this was the one helping me with my mind set Like he said, man, when I got the job at the school, he was like you made it. I was like what I made it? How I made it? Like it's like this, is it. And he said that because experience is king.
Yeah you're right.
Cause.
I know one of my past clients, travelle. He went from. I helped him. This was last year. He went from being a construction to a junior cloud engineer and he reposted a text message thread that we had with each other. He was like and I said, hey yo, your career just starting, you about to blow up, you about to take off. And he had reposted that just to like to kind of show Instagram, like everything. Like I said, cause I like I always agree, I always say when you get that first job, like you got it, you're going to be good. And I was like like a lot of time, hey, tunnel vision, don't get caught into all the lifestyle content, just focus on your skill set and you and put your head down and you're going to grow.
Now I mean we got to get into the difficulties. Now I can't say there wasn't any difficult transition into the next cyber, into cyber.
No, we're going to talk about that because I like cause. People always say, well, hey, we want some people that's like early on or early into their career, so I like also bringing them on too. But I'm definitely going to talk about that, Right, Talk about going from pretty much like a field technician desktop technician, to now a sock analyst at a. I want to say they are what they were a MSSP.
Oh, that MDR so a little bit different, but yeah, it's, it's got the MSP field to it.
Yeah, yeah. And all that means is they manage. Depending on what they might manage for a company is they are probably doing sock work, so they may be doing some instant response for them as well, because some companies either it's cheaper for them to outsource it or they just don't have it built up internally yet to have that functionality. So that's why companies like that exist and, honestly, sometimes they are some of the best places you can start your journey at, because you get to see different environments and learn different things and different attack types.
Sometimes you get stymied early on in your career If you're in a company to where it's not a lot of action happening. So it's kind of like it gets kind of like boring quick, cause nothing's happening. That can stop me a career. So like it's really best to kind of be thrown in a fire, cause once you kind of come through the fire you're going to come out gold. So let's talk about the struggles of when you became a sock analyst and also talk about like why I'll add this to talk about your struggles and then how people always just think it's just some easy entry level role that you know everybody could do, cause people come to me with the misconception. Oh, I want to do this. I want to start my career off and just be an entry level sock analyst and I'm like I hate the Berger bubble. It's 2024. It's not too many entry level sock roles now, but let's talk about your struggles.
Yeah, so the main struggles that I came into was just, it was all different for me. It was like new. You know, like I had been doing IT stuff, but it's different from security. It's a whole different monster. It's different conversations is. You know security deals with everything.
So you're not just dealing with one thing or you know dealing with. You know fixing like software issues and updating stuff, but you're like now securing a lot of different things and you know you're learning how to use these tools. You know if you ever learn something new, you know how it feels and it's all new. You know like there's some parallel but you're probably working in like 10 different tools, 15 different tools, and you're trying to also learn the concepts of security. And you know you're learning about. You know there's like I think there's like what four different main domains, which is like networking, endpoint access and cloud, like those are like.
For me, those are like you know how group things is always got to come through the network.
It's always got to come as a file or some type of you know you know file based detections or you got some type of access issues and so like you kind of got to learn how to categorize.
So you kind of coming from a high level, high view, but then you can't work the alerts if you don't know was, you know in the weeds, you know. So it's just like it's a lot to take in. But but kind of you know, kind of figuring out how to think about the thing, like how to categorize it, how to group it and how to break it up and break it into pieces, really helped me. But like it was a struggle, man, like I really felt, like I had the imposter syndrome, like it was. Like I felt like man, like you know a lot of people I felt like was smarter than me, they had you know, they could you know, because I had just picked up a computer, like before this I hadn't really tested a computer at all Even before I started working on it. That was my first time really touching the computer Literally.
And so I think that's also a little bit generation based Y'all. By the time you got to be like in high school and middle school there was more technology that didn't really need you to use, like you use your phone to do a lot of stuff we used to have to use a computer for when I was in high school. So that's what I'm saying, that's like. It's also like that difference because that's one of the things that they talk about now with Gen Z is like hey, gen Z don't really know how to use computers like that.
And I hated computers, to be honest, like legitimately, like there was no reason for like like. I hate it. I hate computers Like. I actually got hacked when I was in college because I called a fake Amazon and I was kind of doing it like flippantly. You know it's like. Uh, you know like I didn't get my package and I'm about to call these people and so I just looked up the first number. I seen a call and I gave remote access to my computer and on top of that I lauded into my bank account and it lets you know the amount of like hope there is in the realities of like. I would probably never get hacked today, you know, because I hardened myself. You know like, and obviously anybody can get hacked, but like like that lets you know like it's just a knowledge gap, really. That's the difference. You know anybody can do this, you know.
Yeah, anybody can. It's also like, uh, that's the little tech that they like to use. Hey, it's not actually the site, but it's going to show up in a search thing to where, like it's Amazon, and you go to it and look at it. But that's also another. They might be like a separate either a live stream or episode where we talk about, like I'm going to say, caught you a kid at the time, but, like, kids are online now, but they do not know how to remain safe online and do not know how to differentiate between what's legitimate and what's not. So that's definitely a thing to talk about. What's funny?
You remind me of my friend Marquis. We're just laughing at him because I think he either got hacked or whatever years ago. Now, like he's like doing like spunk engineering, spunk architect work and we like laugh at it all the time, cause at the time he's trying to get in cyber. He was like man, he's trying to get in cyber, he's just got hacked or something. But I think he also was using like a fire stick or something at the time too, and you know how that can be.
Anybody can do this, man, they really can. You know, it's like it's open to everybody, it's welcoming to everybody and you know you can do it.
Yeah, I think. I think it takes a certain mindset for certain people to do certain roles because I tell people hey, the thing about, so here's what I do. Now. It's different from when you reached out to me Cause technically you just want to get in cyber security but sock, just happened to come up for you cause you were already doing like some technician work. But now when they reach out to me, I say, hey, go to my LinkedIn or I'll send them the link of those sock endless interview questions.
I had a guy reach out the other day. I'll ask him to see if I can find him on my message request. He was like yo, I got a, I got an interview to be a you know a sock endless or something, and I need some help. Where is he at? Is he here? Let me see. Maybe I put them in general. Let me see. Dang it, he just hit me up. No way, my real manager. Oh, so that's actually a good thing. So look, ironically, when you think about people, they come up. But he had said a sentiment of things. He said okay, so I did the questions and I was able to answer three of them. So I don't know if that meant like he was only able to answer three or he only got the three, but I do that for everyone now because it helps them expand on the thinking part of working in a sock yeah, facts.
So a lot of your interviews now you can take out your notepads, some of them are getting away from tools, because tools two things they make stuff easier a little bit because you don't have to do as much manual stuff. But if you don't even know, it's like one reason why I'm against. Like pinpoint, do this, do that, do that, do that, do that, do that, do that type of playbooks for analysts, because if you box them in like that, they won't be able to think Facts. So some interviews are a little bit more abstract, where they're saying, hey, take all the tools out of the table, let's see what we would look at manually with these logs, what you kind of look for. How would you do this, what would you do? This, this and this and this, and so that's the kind of, like you said, the concept and the theory Philosophy that you got to think about. Yeah, why don't you do this?
And sometimes I'll help people, like it was a guy we were talking to him on the phone. I mean, well, consultation, and he was like, well, I want to get you know, be a sock analyst. And he was, he did some, he does IT stuff. But he had it like, oh, I'm doing incident response. And I was asking him are you actually doing incident response? Or if somebody calls in, they need like antivirus on their machine and some of them are moved. Are you doing that? Well, I think I'm just moving fast. I was like, well, that's cool, but I was like be careful with saying you doing IAR, because they might start to ask you IAR stuff you don't know.
And so I was asking him it was some question about like what would you do if you got a fishing alert right, just keeping it regular, like simple. And then he started saying, well, I don't know, I would do this and that. But I was like, okay, let's back it up. I was like, if no, it wouldn't official, I think I'll say it like how would you handle if you got in an authorized like authentication alert or something? And he couldn't kind of think through it because I was like, okay, it's a mental block there, so let me help him with this. I said somebody broke into your house. What would you do?
Yeah, that's good, that's good.
What would you go check, what would you go look for? And I said, okay, now let's think about the same thing. Somebody logged in, what are you checking? And then that's when the kind of like light kind of clicked on for him. I was like, a lot of this stuff is technical, but in a sense, if you can kind of make somebody kind of connect the dots, they'll have an easier time with it.
That's why, that's why I like categorization and, and you know, just having a thought process of like, how do you like think about thinking? You know like, how, how would you like navigate the scenery? You know like, what does it look like? You know cause, all these tools are are different, yeah, and it's like, but if you don't have the tool in front of you, but you know what you're desiring that's it, that's the key. Try to see what the tool can give you.
That's the key, because I've had interviews with like well, do you know, like SQL or something like that. I was like no, but I was like I know what to look for. Well, I'm going to say like I've used it in the past, but I was like the real issue, I mean the real key, is like hey, I may not have a query down, but if I know what I want to get, I can fix the query, I can figure out what I need to get.
But if I don't know what I'm looking for, that's a bigger sign than me not knowing how to put a query together.
Man cause. There's so many tools.
bro, like you will spend all day and most of them when you really break it down. A lot of them are the languages are kind of based off of like a SQL or something else, and so they're similar. So you go to send no KQL, splunk, spl. If you want to go into like EDRs, like a crowd strike, that's similar to Splunk, but I think they're changing that query to the Raptor stuff, so that's about to change a little bit, but in theory all of them similar.
Most of them use Booleans, Some of them use double quotes, single quotes. They're similar. So if you kind of just get the grasp of the foundation of what you need to get, you can kind of build off that. So much help now when it comes to Reddit. So much help now when it comes to like I love using, like Microsoft Copilot. Now, Like you can tell this hey, break this thing down to me like I was five years old and it makes it simple for you but not to get off the rails with that cause.
that's definitely we'll probably get some more into that. I want to see if you remember this well, not, I'm actually like someone, I actually previously but do you remember like maybe like the hardest alert that you worked earlier on at critical start, that maybe like had you like kind of fusted?
Camel casein. Like Camel casein is where you have different commands that are being ran, but it's, like you know, like lowercase capital.
Yeah, and it's just weird.
I'm like, okay, there's nothing on this screen and, like you know, this is weird and so that one had me very frustrated because I was like I didn't know that was malicious, I didn't, I had no idea.
Yeah, Cause it makes it look like. It's like one of the things where let me see if I'm thinking about this right I've seen this a lot of times where you got like two words looking like it's the same type of URL, but one of them is not the same URL If you look at it real close. They've changed this either like a letter or a number, but it looks like it if you click on the real fast, and so you really got to inspect it Like hey, this is the legit one, this is not the legit one. So you got to pay attention.
Oh, and I've seen like a spoofing to the highest degree, like where it's like somebody had changed one little thing and they'll interrupt email conversation.
Oh, no, no, no, we're going to talk about that. You're talking about, like, in your industry, that's what they do, which is crazy. Yeah, we'll talk about it and we'll even we'll talk more, even offline, about it. So you did cause I'm trying to chronicize this so you say the critical start with like almost two years, three, almost three years. Yeah, it was like you get there in 2021 and then 2023 you leave 2023.
Yeah, that's right.
You know it was crazy, but the time goes for me, so fast I was I wouldn't even know, and if I would like, if you call me in 2023 or 2022 when we talked about, like, the new situation, but what are some of the other things that you learned about. Well, let's do this. I like to. I'm trying to educate the people some more, cause I think you guys had, like, a home based proprietary SIM that you're using, right?
Yes, a SOAR. So I mean that.
Another thing oh, y'all using XB right.
No, ztap, ztap, that's right. Yeah, so I was like I'm using the great SOAR, which is a great SOAR. But another thing I was going to say is the you know, with the SOAR today that's another thing with the tools you know, it's like you know you're spending like 70% of your time in your SOAR. You know, not 70, but like 60% of your time in your SOAR.
So, anyways, well, if you don't even get me started on SOAR man I always talk about. I was the LinkedIn like. I was like a top security voice for a little while because I was contributing to the articles and I was telling my like using SOAR and I was like some organizations actually don't need SOAR, they just need to have their rules. Good for that's coming into that SEM. I was like you're not even mature enough on this end and now you just want to throw a tool in here that's really kind of useless in the sense that it's not benefiting anybody. That's been the rage. You find out as you keep working. A lot of companies will get a tool just so they can sell to a client. Hey, we got this. Hey, come, let us monitor you. We have this. Or you guys got this, okay, we can do it. And the client that you're supporting got it for no reason and they don't really need it. You find out a lot of that.
Yeah, no, I could definitely see something like that being the case, for sure.
But what other outside of like learning about SOAR. And for you guys that don't know what SOAR is, that stands for security, orchestration, automation and response and in theory you can get as granular with SOAR as you want to, which is a benefit, because when you start working in the SOC you start realizing that there is no shortage of logs. You start seeing new logs come in every day and new alerts, so it benefits you. You can bring up all different types of use cases. That's the way I always try to market myself for doing different things or being out of the box. There are always two things you got the engineer and then you have the analyst.
Engineers really good. A lot of times they've never did analysts work, but they're really good at understanding the engineering portion of fixing things, the script and everything else. But the analyst is good at. It's like, hey, I know how it feels to work these things. Let me tell you what would be beneficial to us. So even something simple is like if you're seeing a service account at alert camp or service guy, hey, let's get the API for what are the ticketing system we use and say, hey, do we see any change, tickets or rhythms, or for this thing and put it in here, so we don't even have to go look at that. So nothing returns. We know, okay, there is no rhythm going on. Let me go to the second thing about who owns this thing. Let me reach out to them Because that's what all people don't know. It's technical, but there are also times you can say yourself by not trying to be so smart, by like man let me see if this is a ticket.
Let me see if this is a change. Let me reach out to somebody on this team, because a lot of times, people be doing some work on their environment and you're going to waste your time trying to just look through it when you can just like man. This looked like somebody doing some work. Let me reach out to them.
That's why the best thing is knowing your environment, knowing, having access that you need to like maybe, depending on what ticketing system you got. The ticketing system make sure that just basic things like knowing how things work, that will help so much In a sore. You can get a little bit of the things that you need in front of your face, which would help you in time loss to know if this is bad or not. If you need to Tell me, about it. Yeah, go grain.
But I was going to ask you at critical start did you ever work on like a, and at a high level? Did you ever get to work on like an incident? Or were you guys strictly level one, level two and then pass it off to the XDR part?
No, we actually got to work incident. So they it was like the problem with MSSP and MDR and all those things you go really as far as the tool goes. It's like an inch deep. So the problem with those is that, yeah, you see all these different things and you work all these different things, but you're trying to get it to that organization. So your job is to get the information that would be essential for the organization and you need to respond. Maybe somebody responding to host isolation or something like that, or blocking something, blocking a hash or something like that, whatever it is. But for the most part you're trying to get the write up to the client so that they can take the proper responses that they need, and then you go on about your business. So that's why I say it's an inch deep.
Well, it depends. So, like, do you have a good relationship with the client, then they'll start letting your senior people do stuff Because you have like we was talking about with CrowdStrike or any other EDR where you can do CrowdStrike got the RTR. Yeah, fax you can just go in, like you said, remove a file, start searching for stuff. You can get files and start analyzing them on your own. So there are different things that'll let you do. If you've built that relationship with them and your team shows that competency that you can do that.
Fax.
Now him and I would talk all through this thing, and I think he had got to the point like, man, I don't know if I want to do this anymore or this or that, which I understand, and I'm my person too, like because I've like been your age before and these different things, I'm like, look, that's all good and everything, but you still got to like earn your choice, like I don't care enough about all that. Listen, just do this to get where you got to get. So in the next whatever years, you can start just getting the opportunities that you want. And so we were talking and he was like, yeah, I'm going to sign off for services again. I need to, I need to branch out or whatever. And so we did, I think. I think the one of the first parts of working back together was I connected you with E.
Yeah, which was a great connect.
Yeah, e is actually doing, I think, architect work now for HD supply.
Whoa yeah.
So he's doing some security, I think, architect stuff for them. So yeah, man.
Yeah.
We all and I probably can probably add you to that, Like all of us is like doing like our sec, ops, IR forensics, different type of things where we're talking like business moves, like we're making individually or a. Have you ever seen this? Have you used this tool? And those are the things I didn't have. Early on in my career, I didn't have a network. Well, we did, but we didn't talk as much. But I had to start. That's from 2020 to now. That's what's changed. My network of people who do similar things, that are having different connections, has grown tremendously and has helped me be able to grow individually and personally and professionally. That's the key that I'll probably tell everybody is like get online, find some people with like minds and y'all start like a group chat so you can talk about different things. You can get somebody to worry about hey yo, we seen this file like go crazy in their environment. You guys might need to hit a, threaten and tell them about it.
And you can be. You can be on it.
Yeah, you can be on it ahead of time and it's starting to make you look good. If you know that, or if it's something that you need help with, somebody in the group is better skilled at something than you are. You can learn, like, for instance, this is the one I've really been working on getting better at, especially when it comes to Linux. Like that's the one that I've been working on, because we know most environments are not really heavy Linux. Most of them is windows, maybe Mac OS, but Linux, if you can learn, if you know Linux, you're pretty much kind of no Mac OS. It's not too much of a difference there when it comes to directories and the commands are pretty much the same. But yeah, so I think the first time was like you did that and you really knocked it out of the park. I think that there's. I want to say that was like been more of an engineering role, I believe I can't remember.
Oh, the next role.
That role that you had, that you hooked you up with interview with E.
Oh, yeah, yeah. So that one was. Yeah, it was like I don't know, it's sort of engineering I can't remember.
It was like all right guys, let me also tell you about the type of coach I am and friend, because I do this playing times. I am a person that a lot of times I try to record my stuff if I can. If I can't, I'm always taking notes so I can help out. So we will not be releasing, kind of, where he currently works. But I didn't really get a chance to prepare. But so I was like I'm just going to wing it and see what's up, because I thought it was just going to be. Typically, that first interview is kind of like you just talking, it's not super. You know, I expect in like super technical questions. I'm always just spating like the interview after like talking to a hire manager is the one that I'm going to actually like prepare for. So we're talking and I think still at that time I want to say that I still was a little bit rusty because at the current place that I think I was at that time.
And you were content. Like you know what I mean, I wasn't really content, but you weren't like trying to like break your neck to, to to move forward, like you were cool.
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean I think I'm known like that, unless it's like something I really want. But that's the thing I tell you about. When you start noticing like, hey, this this ain't enough action for me and you start realizing, okay, I got to do other things to build my skill set, but I did that and I was, like you know, a couple of things kind of tripped me up on that and I didn't get the gig, which was cool Cause, like he said, I wasn't tripping, but I had already told him. And like, anytime I get the recruiters email or something like that, and I think I know somebody can do the gig, I immediately send it to him and say, yo, there's the recruiter, I'm gonna hit them up, tell him I sent you the way, this is what you need to know. X, y, z. And then he goes and does the interview and he knocks it out of the park and I believe that was in. What's that May?
That was probably May, I can't remember but I think it might have been May, because I was coming back from a work trip like in Orlando or something.
Yeah, yeah, and I remember you kept a very high level. Like you just gave me like three points. You said, hey, focus on these three domains. You know, like that was it, like it was in, like you know, but it was. But you had always been that way towards me. In regards to work, like you always have tried to make sure I get the work that I need. You would send me this and say, hey, go interview. Like that's why I do coaching with you. Like to this day, I still do work with you. Like if I'm going, I'm sending you, you know I'm booking you again. And I don't even think about a booking relationship, the more I think about it as like if I was like you know financially, you know investing in my future. I think about it like that with my career, like I know that.
I got you in my back pocket, you know, and every time I make a move it's just another option for me. You know, like, hey, I know I got an rate like right there as an option, and so I'm doing all these different things in my process as well. But I know now I also got an rate as a coach, so it's like it's just an additional package that I'm bringing to my hunt. You know, if you know what I mean.
Yeah, I mean that's how it is too. I tell people all the time like you get access to me, but you also get access to my resources, cause there could be a time that he sends me something like I think we got this entry level gig up and I might say I think I got somebody that can do it. So, cause, the hardest part this we're going to really just need to agree to I think the hardest part too for people getting the cybersecurity is like the interview, because there's so much, so much somebody can ask you. So, even just having some bullet points, say, I wish they kind of make it in like school in a sense. Sometimes I've been, I've did some great interview process where they broken them out to say, hey, you guys will be talking about this, this interview will be with this person. You might be focusing on this. I've been in those processes for a near great.
But other ones you're just kind of like okay, they're going to ask you about the role, like somebody may see in the role. Or they're going to ask me like hypotheticals I don't like scenarios that I possibly will not see in the role because of based on how the environment is like ask me what I'll be doing like every day, because you know, and I know that, hey, that's not going to happen here. We know that's not going to happen here, so don't ask me that, and it's just different things. I like to try to just ask kind of stuff, like, based off of what I see on the resume, what I think may happen or what I've experienced, and I'll try to guide you to like, maybe like not the right answer, but if I feel like you got it, I'm like, okay, think about this. So that's the hard part for people. They just don't know what to study for, and I try to come in and help them with that. Like, if they say, yeah, I'm interviewing for this and I'll pick out something that I think may be imperative for them, I say, yo, how good are you on these topics? It was, I don't know that much about them. I was like, well, go read up on them. And you know, please record this thing so we could talk about it. Because that's the key If you can record your interviews, just listen back to them and see where you was rocky at and learn about them. That's how I know.
Lennox Forensics is one I was interviewing with Cloudflare. It's like the second time around and I'm a very one thing about me anybody to tell you that like recruiter wise that I got personal relationships with and we talk about stuff. I'm talking about how I think I did an interview. I'll be honest. I know when I killed it and I know I was like you know I was solid. I was like I know those points where I could have been better and that process was like only one area where I was like I did good when it came to the, when those forensics. But when it came to Lennox stuff I was a little rocky and the guy I was interviewing with came from like Falcon Complete. So the only reason he knew the Lennox stuff is because at Crowdstrike you can get access to like different environments and have to like not really have a tool. You just get the logs and you start working through them. He was like that's just one of them things you're gonna probably eventually see if you get a chance to do it.
So it's one of them things and you learn a turn. I mean sorry, you learn a. You learn a ton when you interview. So, just interviewing, you know what's popular, you kind of. You may not ever touch it, but you have to. You will know so much about what's current. You know you'll. You know it's a process too, like a lot of times you just got to do multiple ones and then you know you'll get your footing and you'll figure out oh, this is how they all work.
You know and and you just keep doing it, you know, but now let's talk about this. Now, at this new place, what did you go? So you went from? What was your end of salary at Critical Start?
It's probably like 67.
Okay, so you went from 67 to how much in this role? Probably in the I'm talking about TC. Just give us-. Yeah, yeah, just TC general Like with your base and like bonus.
Oh, probably like like 120 something. I'm just. I just give you a, I'm just throwing numbers out there.
No, but I always tell people everybody's just trying to hit the home run at the beginning, but I was like if you just just get in, get your experience, your life would change. So this is two years. So we went from 2021 to 2023. So this is two years that he's double the salary twice, or you could say quadruple the salary. That's how fast life can change for you if you just stay down and put the work in.
Yeah, no, that's facts and there's. And really the crazy part about it is when I was at Critical Start, I wasn't the smartest guy, I wasn't the guy people looked at. I was like oh yeah, like, let me go. You know, I wasn't that guy, but I knew that. I knew what I wanted, I knew what I was. You know, I knew what I desired and I always thought ahead. You know, I was always thinking ahead. I was always like, yeah, everybody was very content with what it was and I was like, nah, that's not me bro.
But most of the people who are content probably just don't have friends that are doing it. Because when you, when you have friends that are doing it, you'll think and it's not, and like I'm so glad, Mike, my generation, your generation, we're not as taboo about money because it helps people know if you're being underpaid or not.
Yeah, and let me switch that from contentment to complacent. Like a lot of people were complacent, I was content but, like you know, maybe I had to struggle with contentment, but I wasn't complacent man. I was like, nah, like I want to take a step ahead. You know I'm like because I'm my own brand.
you know like you know, I'm your free agent of that career.
Yeah, you're the guy you know you're building. You're not building the company that you're at, you're building your own brand. You're the CEO of your family, you know.
Yeah, man, like I would say the craziest thing is about tell people too. It's like now you're finna start getting into that territory where the next time you maybe talk to recruiters about jobs, your salary that you ask for is gonna make you a little bit uncomfortable. Like that's the territory you want to be in. Like it's cool, you know you're at the whatever market and it's not to talk about. Like you know I'm talking about in general. But now, once the now you start seeing, like you know four or five years of experience, you gonna be looking at the market. Hey, so what would it take you to come over here? I want 175, 180. Now you're mine, you're like dang, that's a lot. But then you're gonna start looking at it and say, nah, that's my, just do. But it's a lot of people that's listening and watching this that couldn't fathom it because they hadn't touched it. And so that's why I tell people all the time about not selling with your next salary, because once you get there, that company's probably only doing a three to 5% raise every year. So you're not gonna get a chance to make a lot more money in that role unless possibly you get a promotion, and sometimes even a promotion. They don't give you that much money because HR policies A lot of times you gotta leave and come back to get paid. So, with that being said, try to get the most every time you negotiate, every time Like I hit one of my friends, just like I'm always been a person like this.
We met, she did a pie with me and Eric. I was like man, this girl is super smart, I'm sorry, this woman, she's super smart. I was like we was talking behind the scenes. I was like yo, what are you doing? I was like, and I think she's standing in Cali. I said what are you making? I was like what.
I said we gonna help you. Well, I'm gonna help you get some more money, and I will tell you, in the next couple of months, we end up doubling her salary. But that's how I am, though, cause a lot of people don't know, we don't have people in the industry to know, and I'm like your skill set with DLP and inside of the threat cause for this. They underpin you and they know it. I'm gonna help you out.
That's and that was like she didn't owe me nothing, like it wasn't a coaching package or nothing. She just started interviewing. She sent me this stuff. When it came to negotiate, I had to negotiate, that was it. So that's crazy, man. So I wanna talk about now that you pretty much at this time you were two years in outside of learning the environment. Did you have any similar struggles from critical start, or this time you just like ready, it's like I did this for this. It's like I don't wanna say cake, but when you come to just like an internal environment, versus worrying about different things you may be looking at at one place, it's a little bit easier, cause you can focus more.
Yeah, but it was also like you had different struggles, like the struggles were probably like learning the systems, like cause, when you're working for MDR, mssp, you're like you know you don't really touch their, like you know taking a system and stuff like that. Sometimes some people do, but like you don't really, like you don't touch as much and like their internal personal stuff.
Like what.
Like just different internal things, like only what internal users would touch, you know, like in that, and it's kind of confusing cause it's different for everybody.
Yeah, cause I know like we had like access to like a lot of crap, like that's why I like that that contract so much. Like we literally were like there. You know that level one and two guys and then, we work hand in hand with that IR team.
Yeah, that's true, it's different for every company, and yeah, but I can't say MDR is different too, though, because you're really focused on alerts. You're not focused on managing their shop or managing you know what I mean.
So, but it's crazy though, because, like with the one I met now, like it just took off, like I just soared man to the heights, because, like I put two and two together, like I had a better vision of what security looked like, because I'm internal now I'm not external, I'm in the house, you know. Like you know, I'm in big moments house, like this isn't, I'm cooking in the kitchen, I'm seeing how she's working, versus like I'm looking out, you know, from the window. Now I'm in the kitchen, you know. So, like it's totally different and man, like it's just amazing, man, it just you just kind of take off. You started touching a lot of different things. You started, you know, you want to do projects or whatever. It's just awesome.
I'll tell you right now, cause we had I've been so busy so I haven't been to ask you. But, like, right now, just make sure you start if you haven't write all those things you're doing down. The reason why you're taking off and because I know a little bit of background about your role is because you guys took over for something, so it's kind of like y'all started from the ground up. So what seems like, even though you've been there like a close to a year, it's really like two to almost three years of experience because of so many different moving parts. Cause that's how it was when I was on the contract at Optif. It was like we took over for another supplier and kind of had to almost scrap everything and kind of just change stuff as we went, and so like they still got the contract now because of that work we did.
But you started just don't make sense, this don't look right. Why are we doing this? Why are we doing that? So now when I go to other places and I'm like why are y'all doing it like this? This don't make sense, like there's a simpler way to do this. Why are we doing it like this? Why do we have this in place and not utilizing it for what we need it for.
Yeah, and the managers, man, managers are so crucial because they are the ones that get you to access, they are the one that fight for you and you can't fight for yourself.
And then talk about the good thing about having technical managers. Yeah, some people aren't technical managers, which is cool, but I do feel when you're working SOC, when you're working IR, you need somebody that's been in the trenches before. Maybe they haven't been in the trenches in a while, but you need somebody to kick that muscle memory in and say, hey, did you check for this? Did we do this? When it comes to investigation, a lot of times, like your manager may be the incident commander, but you are the responder, so you're there dictating okay, I need you to go check this, check this, check this, this, this, oh, did you get this? Or a lot of times I'm already on it, I got it. They're like thanks, those are the things you need.
That's how you start learning. When some of the things you were talking about about, hey, hijacking email threads and kind of making tricking somebody, you guys probably do business with thinking that they're you like putting, like the typo squad, domains and stuff up. Man, it happens all the time. So, right now, what's your tool stack like right now that you use?
Man, I don't want to be specific with it, but we use a lot of different tools.
I mean, they are I mean, I don't think it like, nobody knows who we're talking about. So I'm just like you know, most players they use like a where they use a signal, they use a splunk, they use a crowd strike titanium or carbon black. You know Like, and I'm only doing it just because maybe somebody hears a tool that they're interested in so they can like say, oh, I wouldn't go learn such a thing because I watched the podcast with Ricardo Sunderi. So it's like one of those things.
Right, right, yeah, but I just, I want to just keep it general, because Okay, they will say like I guess you guys use like EDR tools and stuff like that.
Yeah, so we use EDR, we use a lot of cloud based tools, we use obviously our SIEM, our SOAR and yeah. But those are like the main things where it's like you know, and you got your vulnerability management tools. But you know, even just keeping it in general, like you know those categories, again it's like, yeah, we use like all those different things and yeah.
Yeah, and I'm willing to bet like your biggest alert supply, like fishing related or thing.
No, they're not, they're not yeah, they're not. They are because I don't primarily work with fishing. I do, I do help out, but that's not primarily what I work with, so a lot of them, well, not primarily.
I was saying like well, not necessarily fishing, like what you were talking about earlier is just like now, since I attend. The end user is the person that's possibly causing the issues, more than like. Most of the time, the technologies did most of their job, unless it's a compliance issue and something that has protection on it.
Yeah, so it's like usually like a user, you know, downloading something or clicking, I mean I mean obviously clicking on something and yeah, like those are just, I mean dude. I think security will always exist, because the bad guys always try to find a way to make it more confusing, even with AI.
No, you know.
They don't find a way to use AI to the hardest one to account for right now and I think it's because of people not paying attention is QR codes Interesting? I hadn't thought about that Because you think about it if a attacker finds somebody in your org's email and say so, and so you know you need to set up you know two factor authentication and they kind of make it look like a Microsoft or something, or like Akbar, and the person takes their phone out whether it's a work phone, personal phone, they scan it On the network. We don't know that they visited it Not yet, until unless they start browsing stuff to secure browser. Whatever. You got MDM profile, you got on there.
So now, whatever's happened, we're gonna be late to the party and then that's when you're gonna have to reverse it, say hey, okay, what happened? Oh yeah, I scanned this QR code and this is. So now in the environment, you're gonna hopefully have to try to block that to see what's going on. Somebody start doing like I worked on somewhere, like there's a MFA fraud where somebody is trying to log in some of that things so they have been compromised. Where what happens is and this is like always user-based they are calling into the help desk, acting like somebody else. So they were able to get MFA put on their device, and so now they're trying to log in.
And the other person realizes hey, that's not me, and raises a ticket, and then that's what starts our investigation, and so those are the fun things, and that's why I say based on your environment depends on how much fun you have, and that's the reason why when people ask about the blue team at IR.
It's like that's where it's at. It can get really fun too, and the way things come in are different. Like you will have alerts, Sometimes you'll have threat intel tell you hey, we found this, we got these different tools in our environment and this is where we need to jump on. Or it may be social media.
Yeah, you see, I mean all these different threats and stuff that's been coming in with all these different vulnerabilities just in Q1 alone, have been crazy, and you have your threat intel working on it. Hey, let's go see if we have anything that we're susceptible to this. Are we using this? Okay, hey, we don't need to use this anymore. Why you need to use it? You know. Why are you using your machines to go visit these non-malicious sites, all different type of stuff that you work on with the users, but I wanted to. I'm trying to see if I could ask you this might be a good question what's one thing about your job that nobody else would? I wanna say like a hot take or something that you would agree with but a lot of people would disagree with yeah, hmm, something I would agree with but that everyone else would agree with, right?
I Would say probably the. The AI stuff, man, like I think in Our industry we see that is, it's being used, it's People are finding it more profitable, like they're Incorporated or incorporated into a lot of their workflows and stuff like that, and a lot of people disagree with that and they're like trying to stay away from it, like it's the big bad monster, and they're like, oh man, it's gonna take over, it's gonna take our jobs, and it's like, no, it's uh, it's actually gonna make us better and they make us respond quicker and faster. And yeah, it's not gonna. You know a lot, of a lot of companies like they disagree with that, like you know, like yeah, I don't.
I think lot of people disagree with it just because from the data policy thing of the AI and who owns it, the Tool, who's behind it, so that's like one of those things. I see it a lot.
But but if your company has, you know, contract with a Provider or something like that, you know like it gets it gets rocky.
It really gets rocky with that with the AI, but it can be beneficial. You should understand it. Security personnel Should do all they can to get in these AI startups Especially. That's gonna be probably securing some stuff from AI, because right now people using a out of clone voices.
Right and on top of that the large language models are being compromised. So they have these language models that are being compromised and they're like kind of like, like an injection, you know, like where you're putting in a prompt and you're injecting you know code in it to do something, to be able to get a user, when they're when they're going to go a lot, you know when they're going to do their prompts all those different things like but that's the good about use cases and just stand aware, like why they exist, and that's one of the things now.
It's like if I'm in an interview or something or I'm talking to client, how you stay up to date. I'm like use my stack space. We got a security thing on there I think about. We just heard more about, I think, chains, health care Pays, paid the ransom, like they just bought some pharmacies back online, like the possibilities are endless. You can find a industry to get in and really help them out. But that thing with security that you always see is like how do we stay secure but still be do what we do and still be creative in certain aspects? It's like we don't want y'all to stop doing your work, we just want y'all to be secure. That's all we want, because you make it harder on us when we have to go do stuff that could have been mitigated just by simple Security controls. I typically tell people most breaches are caused by negligence. Most incidents are mostly caused by negligence.
Yeah, you know account passwords not rotating access keys. It's like think about it's like in your own life, like whenever you're lazy about things. Like that's when you can easily get compromised, like you know, like I think about. Like an hacker is like, like like kind of how Satan is, like he kind of goes around and he's going to you know. Essentially, look for easy door open. Open it like laziness, you know, like if you're not being disciplined doing what you're supposed to be doing, like he wants the easy.
Yeah, yeah, the low hanging fruit. You know low hanging fruit, and then, in terms of something big, I definitely agree with that. Sigh, no, outside of that, did you hear about a curator Yama?
No, I haven't he passed away.
Who is it that is the creator of Dragon Ball? Dragon Ball Z man? It was only 68. That's crazy. I think he had an aneurysm. I think I want to see if I could find some.
I want a game Legendary, show, legendary.
One of my favorite parts of of DBZ is let me see if I can find play it real quick.
What's that? Yummy, yum, huh, how you said, how did?
come a man.
Like now. I'm talking about whenever you know you do the power-up, you do that.
That's what it is a man. This is one of my favorite parts of it.
Yes, that's how it happened. That's how I became a Super Saiyan. The sleeper has awakened. I am the prince of all sayings once again, thank.
They cut it off too fast. But, like man, I got some iconic moments like and earlier we were talking about believing in yourself or whatever. There's a distinct thing between people are amazed by how many black people like anime Most of the time because the protagonist is a person who's had a bad life and they make it work and they exceed our expectations. These shows that I grew up watching are like help with that. Literally, goku pretty much went the earth, hit his head, raised by somebody else was really supposed to be I want to say he's supposed to be Killed at birth and then he was stronger than the Prince of Saiyans and all this other stuff that start happening. Based overachiever Nara toe family pretty much died when he was being, when he was born and Astrosize by the village exceeded and became like the pretty much the president of a village.
Like there are different things that Happen in these shows and so that's like a lot of things that happen now. Training, like you talk about going to the gym and stuff like that. I've been really busy, so I that's one area of selecting, unfortunately, but I'm about to get back on it. But Don't do this rip. We want to go to the gym looking like Vegeta and Goku like you can't really look like that, but like it's just though different things, like you'll hear women say there's how about like cartoons by like? No, these Animates are very, very deep. A Lot of them have a lot of complex storylines that come in with people's Brothers dying in front of them or finding out like they had a wrong. Somebody wasn't their dad. It's the actual dad, or just different things.
Yeah different things that they take from like that's happening in society, like in a lot of animates, a lot of writers will use a lot of like their lore. That's stuff that's happening in there. So there's a lot of good things that happen right there.
But you know, foreign shows like the new Godzilla is a great example, like they focus, like I think, nowadays, man, we're just pushing so much content and we're forgetting about substance.
Yeah, we've been watching, um, We've been watching showgun. Me and my labin watch a showgun or FX, it's, it's pretty good. It's pretty good. That's you can tell, like pacing, cinematography, the acting, the actors they got into is like Chef's kiss, it's perfect. So I'm always a sucker for that. Yeah, if I could tell you really put in the work like different shows. I'm always a sucker for that. But before we end, I'm gonna ask you this because you did a technically. Oh, this is actually it. I've been.
He's been supposed to record another testimonial for me for a while, so now we're gonna make him do the testimonial on the pod. But you know me, I'm super busy, like I. To be honest, I don't advertise as nearly as much as I should. I honestly I feel like I shouldn't have to because the work speaks for itself. I'm I'm one of the few people that have people you can go look up and verify. They do what they do and I've helped them and then their names are on my page. But If Somebody's to ask you hey, you worked with textual consulting before, should I work with him? Why would you tell him?
Dude, I don't even think about it as textual consulting cuz. Like it's so personal, right, like whenever we work together and we still work together to this day Like did I started with you and it was just 50 bucks, you know, and it was nothing where we had one-on-one sessions and I could call you at any time of the day. Like that's when I started with you and I I went back with you and I paid whatever the price was and I'll still pay, whatever the prices today, because I believe in it and I don't think about it as, hey, it's gonna give me this great job. No, I just think of it. It's just an additional package that I bring with me whenever I'm on my hunt. You know it's like an extra tool. You know it's an extra tool in my tool bag when I'm on the hunt and so I recommend it.
But don't think that, like you know it's gonna, you know, do all these things for you, but use it for what it's meant to be. It's a coach, you know. Like when you're in the game, you're still playing the game. You know what I mean. Like I'm, if I'm not, training, if I'm not, you know, producing, like I need to do as an individual, then the coach still can't help me. But the coach is meant to help you strategies. He's calling the timeouts, he's helping you with understanding the plays like this is what we're gonna run against, this defense, this is all these things. Like that's what it is. But it's not like you know, it's not like, hey, I'm gonna win the game for you, so. So that's how I think about it. And yeah, I mean I, bro, I'm using you, probably until you die or until I leave. You know, like this, what I'm doing.
I mean yeah, no, no, that's good because I tell people all the time. Like a lot of people came back to me like yo, I'm rocking with you because you're honest and you're all you giving it to me straight. Because I'm just a person where I Just take my integrity with my, my business or me helping people so high. Like a lot of people are Paying a lot of money for different courses and programs, which I don't care about the money, because it's all about what you get out of it. But I think it's that lack of Intimacy or that that connection that they are not getting from. Like paying all that. Like with me you actually get to talk to me, you actually get to. Like I said, if I see something I know you looking for Connecting you with that. Oh, I got a friend to do this, let me see if I can bring them in for a mock interview. You getting different stuff way more than what I'm charging you, because my goal is to help you get in. Like I have people right now. Like I don't really just kick people out and say, okay, after three months I can't help you no more. I really work with you all throughout the year because that's the goal.
Right Not to get paid like. That's why I'm not, that's why you ain't seen no ads like, hey, come give me and getting stopped security in 14 days, or come, do it in a month, I Be rich. You know it and I know it. If I, if I was out there doing some, if I had you recording for me and I had the, I was in the Lambo and with my laptop and saying, do like this and if you want to do like this, give me, I'd be rich. But that's not gonna help. Nobody get in, because it's not easy. Like Outside of your skills and studying everything else, stop security. You sometimes getting in it's about right time and right place. Facts for you, that was the right time and place and it just worked out for you like that fast for me moving out here to Dallas. When I moved out here, my grandma ended up done most that. September 2016.
I moved out here in like June 2016, so shortly after that, she had already been sick for a while, died. I said I was in the knock. I'm gonna get in, I'm gonna get in grad school, let me do that. But it seems like that's what I was supposed to do, because right after grad school no, no, no. While I was there in 2016 like people already know my story I had went to the job fair at Intel that's in Plano and Talk to them and the manager or who's hiring at the time, like me, and so after I got in grad school, I followed back up on it email right time, right place.
The manager was like yo, hey, can you come up here today? I say, when I was hoping LA fitness was hoping I put a whole suit on to go talk to them in, just for him to say in three words when can you start? So that was like my right time, right place moment. So sometimes it do come to that sometimes you're not in the right time, right place. Sometimes some is telling you, hey, you need to move, and you, scared to move, listen and be obedient, and good things happen.
Yeah, and just being persistent and not being afraid to fail, like and also don't take it personal.
You know, whatever business.
Yeah, it's just business and you know, maybe you know it's like going on a date A date is a great example, like a lot of times it don't like. You know you kind of going on a date, you feeling how she feel, you know you're feeling how you feel You're like no, I don't want to go on a second date. It's not, it's not personal. Maybe there's something that I need to work on or something she don't like or something I don't like, you know, but it's Don't take it personal, yeah just keep going.
You know, it's just business, always to people that always tell a young man, I always equate everything to date. And when it comes to interviewing, if I'm saying, uh, how you doing, my name is Andre, who's this guy? I can't trust him to run an incident on the bridge call. But if I get on that, yeah, how you doing? My name is Andre Davis. I got 10 years of experience. I work with this tool, this tool, this tool.
I primarily work on these incidents and I believe these core skills I have will be an asset to your team. They're attracted. If I go up to a young lady, even though I'm not going up to a young lady, I'm like how you doing, today, I'm a name, so-and-so, oh, what you do, what's your name? I'm a name, you want to go get something to drink sometime, whatever, I'm persistent. And then I'll say you know, I'm gonna schedule it, I'm gonna set it up, be persistent, be assertive, but don't be cocky, but like everything with job searching and dating the same way. And then Now when you get the job, you kind of look at it like you can say it's only different because you can't say merry, because, like Unless, like you own the job.
You know you can't stay like that forever unless, like, those days are over. But if it is a place that's showing you love and you get to move up around now you got to keep on doing the stuff that you did to get the job in order to maintain and stay better. That's the thing now that we've been preaching, like a lot of us who are in tech jobs before 2020. We still hear Some of the people who got in through fraudulent ways, through the pandemic. They've been struggling and that's because they had bad, a bad foundation. They had they. They found they should have been on saying oh man, come on now listen, I, I do.
I do not frequent churches on youtube, but do not get it messed up. That's what we did. I was a musician where he's at church, where the scriptures was on the screen and one just my uncle was up there just saying stuff that he wanted to make you feel good.
Now we, we were scripture based, so hey, and the analogy, the parables man, they stand. They stand a test of time to this day.
Talking about the foundation, yeah, could you just you just talk about the royal line, seeing who they made the vibe?
Yeah, like they don't know somebody gonna preach right now, they scream it right now home and I always think about like when I'm, even when I'm not picking up something, I'm thinking like how would? Because you need to kind of Take it out of something that you don't know to something that you do know, and so for me I'm all about my face, so I'm taking it to, oh, like how does the enemy work, you know? And that same enemy could be compared to yeah, you know how an attacker would work, you know?
or just like we're talking about. I was talking about, something is telling you to move, and we could bring up like Anything. Or we talk about what? What was it? Caleb and Joshua, they're talking to go walk around the wall. So Jericho, how many times?
I can tell you it was a 75 712.
I don't know, y'all know the story, but anyway, the wild start coming down, which I think that can also be a parable for like internally, spiritually, immensely. But they went and did it and it happened and they told Noah's gonna be a great flood and everybody looking at him stupid, but he prepared for the rain, yeah. Or one of my favorite ones is uh, I used to love like autos. I forgot who used to run these movies, but the uh, what was it gonna?
fireproof Facing the John talking about the kinders brothers whatever they are, but like facing the John's and stuff like that. They tell the coach about the two farmers.
One complain about the rain one prepared for it, like which one are you gonna be? Are you gonna complain about it not raining, or you gonna prepare for the rain? So when it rain, you're gonna be ready. It's some of you complaining right now that I ain't got the interview, I'm doing all this and that ain't working. You're gonna keep complaining or you're gonna keep on preparing for. So when it's time to get that job that's meant for you, you're gonna knock it out the park. That's what I want you to remember. Yeah, if you don't take nothing else away from this, that's what you need to take away from this. You're gonna know when it's just weird, you know when the role it just feels so right, when you just feel like it's coming to you. I can't explain it, but it's just like a what y'all want to offer me, okay. Okay, what would be? What would be like? You know a couple things you would want to leave the audience with right now.
Yeah, I think there's. You know multiple things, but I think what we talked about earlier in the conversation, which is the mindset, I believe that's the most important thing how you think about where you at, where you're going, and also just to be humble man, like ask a lot of questions and don't think that you know it all. I mean, pride is like the killer of momentum, but humility is a great slide into the next thing, that whatever it is that you want to do. And so just remember, man, be humble, stay hungry, you know, and the opportunities are out there, they're just waiting on you to step up to the plate. Really, there's like how many jobs are there out there, like they talk about? It need to be filled all the time.
They say it's like half a million. I have my own. I've did a video on that. I got my own thoughts on it. They out there.
They, they want these crazy amount of like skills and nobody has them. But the reality is is that they're out there. You know what I mean and you're, you know you could be that person, so anyways. So just keep your head up and keep pushing.
Nice and I want to leave y'all with this because I want y'all to always remember this when it come to me.
I Might tell you a joke, but I'll never tell you a lie.
I'm telling you I might tell you a joke, but I never tell you a lie. Hey, it's been good rocking with y'all, but until next time let's stay textual and we out Peace.
