Navigating Entry-Level Cybersecurity Careers as a New Grad

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome back to the Textual Talk. I'm your host, henry Davis. The Textual Talk is a podcast that showcases people's interest in journeys into their current tech position. In today's episode, we'll be talking to none other than Makaya Gonzalez, a recent college graduate who is now doing digital forensics and her first cybersecurity job from college. Makaya working in help desk internship for three years to landing a cybersecurity role paying $90,000 in her first role ever that's right. This episode is for the people who are contemplating ongoing a college how to check out the curriculum and see if it stacks up against the current job descriptions, how did network and how hard is it to actually get an internship. So if you're one of those people, then you'll enjoy the show. But first make sure that you please follow the podcast and also, after you're done with it, please leave us a review. It really helps us out in the podcast download metrics. But enjoy the show. Tick tock Robin here, but I like this. Yeah, this is a little tick tock mash up there. I like that. What say that your favorite movie or what movie are you ready to go see?

Speaker 3: 2:18

Okay, maybe this is a little corny, but I think right now, at the moment, my favorite movie is the new the color purple movie. It was really, really good, but I never saw the original. I never saw the original, but, yeah, I like the new color purple movie and I'm also kind of like a huge Marvel fan, so I like the Avengers movies, x-men actually, the X-Men movies are my favorite movies.

Speaker 1: 2:45

Really it's like a. I'm not gonna lie, most of the X-Men movies is like kind of mid and then they got good it was not mid. First class was very good.

Speaker 3: 2:54

Yeah, first class.

Speaker 1: 2:57

It was a one after that. That was good. Wolverine's origin story was pretty good which was funny that Ryan Reynolds was in it and we just knew. It was like we know he's Deadpool but they can't say he's Deadpool because it's Fox, like it was. It was crazy, but he was doing everything Deadpool does For me. Why saw the old couple purple as a kid? And I kind of used to like it, but then as I got older I kind of didn't like it, and I definitely don't have any plans to see the new one. This is because nobody asks for a remake of the movie.

Speaker 3: 3:25

It's not a remake, though it's it's. It's like the musical, it's like the Broadway version yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:34

Makes sense, I guess. But I know for me what movie is coming out. I actually want to see Book of Clarence. That seems interesting. Last year was a lot of good ones. Crete 3 was good.

Speaker 3: 3:47

Yeah, I really liked the film too.

Speaker 1: 3:49

Yeah, that was good. Actually, even though I feel like I knew what type of agenda it was pushing, I actually did like the Barbie movie. I think it was cool.

Speaker 3: 4:01

What type of agenda was it pushing?

Speaker 1: 4:03

It was pushing one of the things we're trying to make that, and don't get me wrong here but it was one of those. I really didn't like it because it was like, oh, ken came out here and then he did all this crazy stuff and now the Ken don't know how to function Nothing. And then now the women got to take back control. I think they could have showed balance because it actually, in our aspects, it did the opposite. It made it feel like Ken didn't know what he was here for without being by Barbie. But I mean, I don't know, it was for adults. I think it was cool because most little girls played with Barbie dolls.

Speaker 3: 4:44

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 4:45

They remember that.

Speaker 3: 4:46

Yeah, some of the references were cute and cool. But yeah, I've been hearing the other side of things. A lot of people feel like Ken was too centered in the movie period.

Speaker 1: 4:58

They made Ken be. I expected him to go a different way but I know Ken was going to be pretty much the antagonist of the movie. That was wild to me. I thought it was going to be see one of my favorite movies from childhood. I'm going to tell you I got like a lot of movies that I can watch like I've never seen before Clueless. Oh, wow. Yeah, you didn't expect me to say that one. I love Clueless I used to watch. I'm a little older than you, so I used to watch the Clueless series before school.

Speaker 4: 5:25

Okay, yeah, I think I've seen that like it had episodes.

Speaker 1: 5:26

It was pretty good because they had all the same actors, except for they had a couple times people change so Clueless. I can watch Selena like I've never, ever seen it before. Like I love that. That started well. I don't really had to love them anymore, but that's how. Like J-Lo used to be my crush, like J-Lo, I used to love some J-Lo just from Selena. Anything for Selena, this bumper, oh my gosh. Yeah, everybody heard me say this before. Major Panes. One of my favorite movies, skoola Rock, really is anything like upbeat, like that's like, just like I can watch with the kids or whatever, but also like anything that kind of like reminds me of like the 90s and like good childhood stuff. That's what I really like about. Like all those, all those movies and there are countless others that I probably used to watch like that I know life. I know life like the like. I can do a word for word. That's like that's the movie right there, Life. Life by like hands down, like the funniest movie, but y'all didn't come here to hear us talk about movies. Welcome back to the Tech To Talk podcast. Well, I'm your host HD. If you're listening on Apple podcast, Spotify, any other streaming service, please like the podcast, leave us a review so it helps us out with the podcast algorithm. And if you're currently watching this on YouTube right now, you know what to do Hit the thumbs up, subscribe, hit all so you can be notified when I'm dropping all content. It's episode 114. And this is the first live episode Well, live and personal episode of 2024. And so you know I'm back to drop some pressure today. And today we have our guest, Makaya, with us. Hello Makaya. G and she's all the way from well, from Florida and then she's also from Gary, indiana. But I thought this would be a good episode to bring her in because she's new to the field and she's pretty much a recent graduate and I know a lot of people that watch my content are not necessarily people that's in their mid career or senior level and they always want to hear from people who are just got in or what challenges and stuff that they faced in their career. So in this episode those are some of the things we're going to address and hopefully you'll leave and lighten from the things that you hear. Makaya has to say. But, makaya, how you doing today?

Speaker 3: 7:44

I'm doing well, can't complain, can't complain. How about yourself?

Speaker 1: 7:47

Good, I'm actually enjoying this weather. You are. Yeah, nobody was on the road.

Speaker 3: 7:52

Okay, that's true, I got here super fast.

Speaker 1: 7:55

I stay in Aubrey. I got here fast.

Speaker 3: 7:57

Okay, yeah, I stay in Addison. Took about 1517 minutes to get over here on the toll road.

Speaker 1: 8:04

Do you stay? Never mind it's too high level. I forgot you in cybersecurity, but I'll just say I used to like I didn't stay in Addison, but I stayed close enough to it A while back and I used to always go to a village on the parkway. So I was either a yard house or sidecar or the other one that people go to stir.

Speaker 3: 8:23

Oh stir, I haven't been to the stern Addison but I've been to the one downtown or in deep Elm but I've been to the village on the parkway like to AMC.

Speaker 1: 8:34

And they got that cheese popcorn.

Speaker 3: 8:38

And a couple of the restaurants over there. But I like Addison. It's a cute, cool area. I've been wanting to venture out, maybe, but I haven't even been here for a year yet. So I think I I think I want to explore that area a little bit more before I branch out, but I've been looking at Bishop Arts.

Speaker 1: 8:56

Okay, so you want to be in the, you want to be in the middle of everything.

Speaker 3: 9:00

That's the thing I really don't like. I like how Addison's out, the way it's quiet. I feel super safe over there. I like.

Speaker 1: 9:10

I always say it's a good medium because it's not that far from down here.

Speaker 3: 9:12

It's not.

Speaker 1: 9:13

So it's like if you want to come, you can just come, like when one of my friends, when she used to stay in the uptown, and I we want to do something, I like, bet I'm going to come, drive down and I just park at they spot and then we get active.

Speaker 3: 9:24

Yeah, and it's yeah, that's true, because I have friends that stay over in this area but also more in like DFW or like Allen or McKinney, so I'm like, I'm like the middle point for everybody. So that's true.

Speaker 1: 9:40

So I'm getting them spam text messages talking about your U SPS package.

Speaker 3: 9:44

Y'all got to try harder. I've been getting that too, y'all got to try harder.

Speaker 1: 9:48

I'm going to put these people on the thing so y'all can block them, but can you go ahead and just introduce yourself for the guests and kind of just give them a background of who you are?

Speaker 3: 9:59

Okay, well, I'm Makaya. I'm originally from Gary, indiana. Fun fact my birthday is leap day and it's a leap year, so I'll finally be turning six. I went to school in Tampa Florida at the University of South Florida, graduated with my BS in cyber security Well, actually, information security and a minor in French, and moved to Dallas last June to start my career.

Speaker 1: 10:31

Interesting, so we're definitely going to get into that. I want to dive into you. Leaving high school, going to college, was information systems, the major you knew you were going to go into. Leaving from college? No, I mean from high school, I'm sorry.

Speaker 3: 10:44

Yeah, no, it wasn't. So I knew I had an interest for tech, but I'm more so new that I didn't want to do anything in the medical fields, like that's not really my thing, wasn't really into law. So it was kind of like, okay, tech sounds cool, and that my interest sparked because my senior year of high school actually, I took a web development class, even though it's not you know what I'm doing now. But like learning CSS and like I don't know, just the fact that you can write something and it does something like that right there, like was like whoa, so. But I had a strong love for like cultures. I'm Puerto Rican and I was taking AP French in high school. So I was like, okay, I want to do something like with coaches. So my first major when I was a freshman was actually international business. But I looked a little closer at the curriculum and saw that I had to take business calc. So I dropped it like a month later and switched to it. And then my sophomore year is when my school opened up cybersecurity as a new major. It wasn't even a major when I first started, so they opened cybersecurity as a brand new major. It had all the same pre-rex as it, but the electives in the higher level classes were different, so I switched over my sophomore year and then graduated with that.

Speaker 1: 12:06

Okay, I got a couple of questions for you. But what? What college did you go to? Again?

Speaker 3: 12:09

University of South Florida.

Speaker 1: 12:11

Okay, and what's? What's y'all Oak Bulls, okay.

Speaker 3: 12:13

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 12:14

Yeah, I thumbs down y'all yeah. And then chat and put the tech bulldogs. It like take bulldogs. That's my undergrad.

Speaker 3: 12:23

Okay.

Speaker 1: 12:24

But so I got a lot of questions for you. So number one well, you're, you're Gen Z, right yeah?

Speaker 3: 12:32

It's not a bad thing. No, it's not.

Speaker 1: 12:34

I'm only saying that because on Twitter it's like the running joke how y'all didn't experience what we experienced with MySpace.

Speaker 3: 12:41

But that's the okay. That's why I hesitate, because it's like I feel like the 2000s baby were like right on the cusp, like I. I remember MySpace. I wasn't old enough to like have it. I remember MySpace. We I didn't grow up, we weren't like iPad kids. There wasn't really that. I didn't have a phone or anything like that. So, but yeah, we're reasoning about MySpace.

Speaker 1: 13:04

No, well, so MySpace to update your profile, you can go in there and you could change all the code so you can hide stuff, do all these different things. So a lot of people were doing some sort of web development program and back then they didn't know it, they just wanted to make their page look good, so that's why I brought that up. It is, I will say, like I think there was like the end part of like. So I have Gen Z siblings, my sister being the youngest, born in 08, then my baby brothers are in 04 and 05. So they very much kind of grew up like you, but then different. Like they did have like little tablets and stuff, but for the most part while I was there it still was like we used to go rent movies from the library at that time. Well, at that time, when they were small, it was actually like DVDs, but when I was coming up, we were rent movies Like I. Honestly I'll be wanting stuff to like go back like people red box had. You know that run where everybody's going to red box. I would love and it wouldn't be a lot of money in it. But if somebody could do it, I would love for somebody to get a movie rental place where you come pick up popcorn and you bring the kids and y'all go find movies so you can watch them. It was just a. I mean, in a sense it's a way to spend time.

Speaker 3: 14:14

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:14

That's what it was, I think now everything is so accessible. Exactly A lot of the kids are not patient at all Like anyone in town and that's how, like my kids like that they go watch anything. My little girl loves Boss Baby. She's been watching Boss Baby every day for like the last two weeks. Like she loves Boss Baby, like I ain't gonna loss a little funny movie I had never watched it. So I sat down and watched it with her. I see why she liked it. But I was like, come on now, like Boss Baby can't be this good and, surprisingly, tell these hubbies.

Speaker 3: 14:44

Oh, okay, it's on Netflix. It is, yeah, tell the.

Speaker 1: 14:46

Tubbies is on Netflix.

Speaker 3: 14:48

I never liked the old school, like they didn't remake it.

Speaker 1: 14:51

It may add to some stuff to remaster it. But pretty much same. Thing.

Speaker 3: 14:55

Oh, wow, that reminds me. That's funny that she rewatches that movie, because my mom told me I did the same thing with Lilo and Stitch. That was the movie that I watched multiple times in a day, every day, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 15:08

But now let's get back into you picking. You can say management information system, CIS they're all the same thing to me. How do you feel about? Well, since you said technically, like you did the web development class and then you switched that major, I feel like most people go to college for the first year and then switched that major. It's because you're actually an 18 year old to pick something they're gonna do for the rest of their life and it's something that's getting to our career field and decide to just do something different. So I think that's pretty hard to ask them to do. But what do you feel about that program? Like what was, like your curriculum, like Cyber security. Yeah, also you did. I know you said you did CIS, so did you start monitoring in cyber?

Speaker 3: 15:52

No, so I did international business, then I switched to IT and then I switched to cyber security.

Speaker 1: 15:57

Yeah, Okay, well, let's. So. How so did you do any? I know you said once you the next year they had you were in information system, but then they had cyber for the major. Did you do anything in information systems so you switched right to cyber?

Speaker 3: 16:09

It was all like prereqs. So there was, I think, like programming fundamentals, which was Java. We learned Java and then C and it was the same for cyber security. So those credits just like switched right over. So when it came to the higher level classes that were more specialized, like ethical hacking or object oriented programming, that was specific to the cyber security major. So I didn't really do. I'm not sure what the curriculum for IT would have been, but the cyber security major was just more specialized, for sure, more about the theory really.

Speaker 1: 16:49

Okay, cool. So let me ask you this when you picked the major of cyber security, did you have an idea of what your end goal doing cyber was? It was just I want to be in cyber security.

Speaker 3: 16:59

I had no clue Like I didn't really know anything about cyber security when they opened the major. It just sound cool. And I mean I was one of those people that thought, oh, like, oh, I could be a hacker, like wearing the gray hoodie and the binary code going on, so it just sounded cool. So I had no clue what to do until, honestly, my senior year which in my opinion was way too late and I was going through a period really hard in my junior year where it seemed like all of my peers were like miles ahead of me, like they knew they wanted to be pen testers, they were good at it and I just could not figure out how did they get here? And we all had the same classes. I remember these people from two years ago. How did they develop so far? So my senior year is when I really like buckled down and was like okay, like, let me find my niche, let me find what I want to do, and I'm honestly still figuring that out. This is my first. The job I have now is my first job in the fields and it's kind of like a rotational program, so, which is really good. I love that I can do that, like spend a few months in a department and see if I like it and then at the end of the program I get to choose which one I want to go in. So right now I'm doing digital forensics, which is cool. I didn't know anything about digital forensics. That wasn't part of the curriculum. I think it wasn't elective. We'll get there. Okay.

Speaker 1: 18:25

I didn't want you to give them too much sauce in the beginning, but because you remind me of something that most people struggle with, at least people of color. Are you a first gen graduate?

Speaker 3: 18:40

Yes.

Speaker 1: 18:42

And I always ask that because it always numbers and everything to say. But the first gen graduates do well enough, but most of the time not on a level like you said, some of your peers because nine times out of 10, they had mentors that either it was like a frat or something or they had people that were helping them say, hey, do this. And it's like my baby brothers Right now he's telling me about some class he's got that's gonna get them A plus or whatever. Welcome back to the Textual Talk. I'm your host, henry Davis. The Textual Talk is a podcast that showcases people's interest in journeys into their current tech position. In today's episode we'll be talking to none other than Makaya Gonzalez, a recent college graduate who is now doing digital forensics in her first cybersecurity job from college. Makaya working in help desk internship for three years to landing a cybersecurity role paying $90,000 in her first role ever. That's right. This episode is for the people who are contemplating on going to college how to check out the curriculum and to see if it stacks up against the current job descriptions. How did network and how hard is it to actually get an internship? So if you're one of those people, then you'll enjoy the show. But first make sure that you please follow the podcast and also, after you're done with it, please leave us a review. It really helps us out in the podcast download metrics. But enjoy the show. Tick tock Robby here. But I like this. I like this song too. This year this little tiktok mashup. I like Becky, I like this. What say your favorite movie or what movie are you ready to go see?

Speaker 3: 21:29

Okay, maybe this is a little corny, but I think right now, at the moment, my favorite movie is the new the color purple movie. It was really really good, but I never saw the original. I never saw the original. But yeah, I like the new color purple movie and I'm also kind of like a huge Marvel fan, so I liked the Avengers movies, X-Men actually, the X-Men movies are my favorite movies.

Speaker 1: 21:56

Really. It's like a, I'm not gonna lie. Most of the X-Men movies is like kind of mid and then they got good it was not mid. First class was very good.

Speaker 3: 22:06

Yeah, first class.

Speaker 1: 22:08

It was a one after that. That was good. Wolverine's origin story was pretty good which was funny that Ryan Reynolds was in it and we just knew it was like we know he's Deadpool but they can't say he's Deadpool because it's Fox, like it was. It was crazy, but he was doing everything Deadpool does For me. I saw the old color purple as a kid and I kind of used to like it, but then as I got older I kind of didn't like it and I definitely don't have any plans to see the new one. This is because nobody asks for a remake of the movie.

Speaker 3: 22:36

It's not a remake, though. It's like the musical, it's like the Broadway version yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:45

Makes sense, I guess. But I know for me what movie is coming out. I actually want to see Book of Clarence. That seems interesting. Last year was a lot of good ones. Creed III was good.

Speaker 3: 22:58

Yeah, I really liked that one too.

Speaker 1: 23:00

Yeah, that was good. Actually, even though I feel like I knew what type of agenda it was pushing, I actually did like the Barbie movie. I think it was cool.

Speaker 3: 23:12

What type of agenda was it pushing?

Speaker 1: 23:14

It was pushing one of the things we're trying to make that, and don't get me wrong here but it was one of those. I really didn't like it because it was like oh, ken came out here and then he did all this crazy stuff and now Ken don't know how to function, nothing. And then now the women got to take back control. I think they could have showed balance because it actually in all aspects it did the opposite. It made it feel like Ken didn't know what he was here for without being by Barbie. But I mean, all in all, it was for our adults. I think it was cool because most little girls played with Barbie dolls, so they remember that.

Speaker 3: 23:57

Yeah, some of the references were cute and cool. Yeah, I've been hearing the other side of things. A lot of people feel like Ken was too centered in the movie period but they made Ken be.

Speaker 1: 24:10

I expected him to go a different way but I know Ken was gonna be pretty much the antagonist of the movie. That was wild to me. I thought it was gonna be see one of my favorite movies from childhood. I'm gonna tell you I got a lot of movies that I can watch like I never seen them before Clueless. Oh, wow. You didn't expect me to say that one did you. I love Clueless. I used to watch. I'm a little older than you, so I used to watch the Clueless series before school. Okay. Yeah, episodes. It was pretty good Cause they had all the same actors, except for they had a couple of times people changed, so Clueless. I can watch Selena like I've never, ever seen it before, like I love that. That started well. I don't really had to love them anymore, but that's how J-Lo used to be my crush. Like J-Lo, I used to love some J-Lo Just from Selena. Anything for Selena. This bumper my movies right there. Everybody heard me say this before Major Pains, one of my favorite movies, school of Rock. Really it's anything like upbeat, like that's like I can watch with the kids or whatever, but also like anything that kind of like reminds me of like the 90s and like good childhood stuff. That's what I really like about. Like all those, all those movies and there are countless others that I probably used to watch like that I know life. I know life like the like. I can do a word for word. That's like. That's the movie right there, life. Okay. Life probably hands down like the funniest movie, but y'all didn't come here to hear us talk about movies. Welcome back to the Tech to Talk podcast, where I'm your host HD. If you're listening on Apple podcast, spotify or any other streaming service, please like the podcast, leave us a review so it helps us out with the podcast algorithm. And if you're currently watching this on YouTube right now, you know what to do, hit the thumbs up, subscribe, hit all so you can be notified when I'm dropping all content. It's episode 114. And this is the first live episode well, live and personal episode of 2024. And so you know I'm back to drop some pressure today, and today we have our guest Makaya with us. Hello, hello. Makaya G and she's all the way from well, from Florida, and then she's also from Gary, Indiana. But I thought this would be a good episode to bring her in because she's new to the field and she's pretty much a recent graduate and I know a lot of people that watch my content are not necessarily people that's in their mid-career or senior level and they always want to hear from people who are just got in or what challenges and stuff that they face in their career. So in this episode those are some of the things we're going to address and hopefully you'll leave enlightened from the things that you hear Makaya has to say. But, Makaya, how you doing today?

Speaker 3: 26:54

I'm doing well, can't complain, can't complain. How about yourself?

Speaker 1: 26:58

Good, I'm actually enjoying this weather.

Speaker 3: 27:00

You are.

Speaker 1: 27:01

Yeah, nobody was on the road.

Speaker 3: 27:03

OK, that's true, I got here super fast.

Speaker 1: 27:06

I stay in Aubrey. I got here fast.

Speaker 3: 27:08

OK, yeah, I stay in Addison. Took about 15, 17 minutes to get over here on the toll road.

Speaker 1: 27:15

Do you stay? Never mind, it's too high a level. I forgot you're in cybersecurity, but I'll just say I used to like I didn't stay in Addison, but I stayed close enough to it A while back and I used to always go to a village on a parkway, so I was either at Yard House or Sidecar or the other one that people go to. Stur oh, stur.

Speaker 3: 27:35

I haven't been to the Stur in Addison but I've been to the one downtown or in Deep Ellum but I've been to Village on the Parkway like to AMC.

Speaker 1: 27:45

And they got that cheese popcorn.

Speaker 3: 27:49

And a couple of the restaurants over there, but I like Addison. It's a cute, cool area. I've been wanting to venture out, maybe, but I haven't even been here for a year yet, so I think I want to explore that area a little bit more before I branch out, but I've been looking at Bishop Arts Oakland.

Speaker 1: 28:09

So you want to be in the middle of everything.

Speaker 3: 28:11

That's the thing I really don't like. I like how Addison's out, the way it's quiet, I feel super safe over there.

Speaker 1: 28:21

I always say it's a good medium because it's not that far from down here. It's not so, it's like if you want to come, you can just come. When one of my friends when she used to stay in Uptown and we want to do something, I bet I'm going to come, drive down and I just park at Dayspot and then we get active.

Speaker 3: 28:35

Yeah. Yeah, that's true, because I have friends that stay over in this area, but also more in DFW or Allen or McKinney, so I'm the middle point for everybody. So that's true.

Speaker 1: 28:51

So I'm getting them spam text messages talking about your USPS package.

Speaker 3: 28:55

Y'all got to try harder. I've been getting that too.

Speaker 1: 28:58

Y'all got to try harder. Aura, I'm going to put these people on the thing so y'all can block them, but can you go ahead and just introduce yourself for the guests and just give them a background of who you are?

Speaker 3: 29:11

OK, well, I'm Makaya. I'm originally from Gary, indiana. Fun fact my birthday is leap day and it's a leap year, so I'll finally be turning six. I went to school in Tampa Florida at the University of South Florida, graduated with my BS in cybersecurity well, actually, information security and a minor in French, and moved to Dallas last June to start my career.

Speaker 1: 29:42

Interesting, so we're definitely going to get into that. I want to dive into you. Leaving high school, going to college Was information systems the major you knew you were going to go into? Leaving from college? No, I mean leaving from high school, I'm sorry.

Speaker 3: 29:55

Yeah, no, it wasn't. So I knew I had an interest for tech, but I more so knew that I didn't want to do anything in the medical field, like that's not really my thing, wasn't really into law. So it was kind of like, ok, tech sounds cool, and that my interest sparked because my senior year of high school actually, I took a web development class, even though it's not what I'm doing now, but learning CSS and I don't know. Just the fact that you can write something and it does something that right there was like whoa. But I had a strong love for cultures. I'm Puerto Rican and I was taking AP French in high school. So I was like, ok, I want to do something with culture. So my first major when I was a freshman was actually international business. But I looked a little closer at the curriculum and saw that I had to take business calc. So I dropped it like a month later and switched to IT. And then my sophomore year is when my school opened up cybersecurity as a new major. It wasn't even a major when I first started. So they opened cybersecurity as a brand new major. It had all the same prereqs as IT, but the electives and the higher level classes were different, so I switched over my sophomore year and then graduated with that.

Speaker 1: 31:17

OK, I've got a couple questions for you. But what college did you go to?

Speaker 3: 31:19

again, University of South Florida.

Speaker 1: 31:22

OK, and what's your oak bulls? Ok, yeah, I thumbs down y'all.

Speaker 3: 31:27

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:28

And then chat and put the tech bulldog. It like tech bulldogs. You know, that's my undergrad.

Speaker 3: 31:33

Oh OK.

Speaker 1: 31:35

But so I got a lot of questions for you. So number one well, you're your Gen Z, right yeah?

Speaker 3: 31:43

It's not a bad thing. No, it's not.

Speaker 1: 31:45

I don't even say that, because on Twitter it's like they're running joke how y'all didn't experience or we experienced with MySpace.

Speaker 3: 31:52

But that's OK, that's why I hesitate, because it's like I feel like the 2000s. We're like right on the cusp, like I remember MySpace. I wasn't holding up to like have it. I remember MySpace. We I didn't grow up, we weren't like iPad kids. There wasn't really that, I didn't have a phone or anything like that. So, but yeah, we're reasoning about MySpace.

Speaker 1: 32:15

No, well, so MySpace to update your profile, you can go in there and you could change all the code so you can hide stuff, do all these different things. So a lot of people were doing some sort of web development program back then. They didn't know it, they just wanted to make their page look good, so that's why I brought that up. It is, I will say, like I think there's like the end part of like. So I have Gen Z siblings, my sister being the youngest, born in 08. Then my baby brothers are in 04 and 05. So they very much kind of grew up like you, but then different. Like they did have like little tablets and stuff, but for the most part while I was there it still was like we used to go rent movies from the library at that time. Well, at that time, when they were small, it was actually like DVDs, but when, I was coming up, we were rent movies. Like, honestly, I'll be wanting stuff to like go back, like people with Redbox had you know that run where everybody's going to Redbox, I would love, and it wouldn't be a lot of money in it. But if somebody could do it, I would love for somebody to get a movie rental place where you come pick up popcorn and you bring the kids and y'all go find movies so you can watch them. It was just a. I mean, in a sense it's a way to spend time. That's what it was. I think now everything is so accessible. A lot of the kids are not patient at all Like anyone in town and that's how, like my kids were like that they go watch anything. My little girl loves Boss Baby. She's been watching Boss Baby every day for like the last two weeks. Like she loves Boss Baby, like I ain't gonna lost a little funny movie. I had never watched it till I sat down and watched it with her. I see why she liked it. But I was like, come on now, like Boss Baby can't be this good and, surprisingly, tilly Tuppies.

Speaker 3: 33:55

Oh, okay.

Speaker 1: 33:56

It's on Netflix.

Speaker 3: 33:57

It is.

Speaker 1: 33:58

Yeah, Tilly Tuppies is on Netflix.

Speaker 3: 33:59

I never liked Tilly Tuppies, like the old school, like they didn't remake it.

Speaker 1: 34:02

It may add to some stuff to remaster it. But pretty much the same. Thing.

Speaker 3: 34:05

Oh, wow, that reminds me. That's funny that she rewatches that movie, because my mom told me I did the same thing with Lilo and Stitch. That was the movie that I watched multiple times in a day, every day. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 34:19

But now let's get back into you picking in. Well, you could say management information system, cis, they're all the same thing to me. How do you feel about? Well, since you said technically like you did the web development class and then you switched that major, I feel like most people go to college for the first year in their source damage.

Speaker 3: 34:38

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 34:39

It's because you're actually an 18 year old to pick something they're gonna do for the rest of their life, and it's something else that gets into our career field and decides to just do something different. So I think that's pretty hard to ask them to do. But what do you feel about that program? Like what was like your curriculum, like Cyber security. Yeah, oh, so you did. I know you said you did CIS, so did you start monitoring in cyber?

Speaker 3: 35:01

No, so, I did international business, then I switched to IT and then I switched to cybersecurity.

Speaker 1: 35:07

Okay, yeah, well, let's. So how so did you do any? I know you said once you the next year they had you were an information system, but then they had cyber for the major. Did you do anything? In information systems or you switched right to cyber.

Speaker 3: 35:20

It was all like prereqs. So there was, I think, like programming fundamentals, which was Java we said we learned Java and then C and it was the same for cybersecurity. So those credits just like switched right over. So when it came to the higher level classes that were more specialized, like ethical hacking or object oriented programming, that was specific to the cybersecurity major. So I didn't really do. I'm not sure what the, what the curriculum for IT would have been, but the cybersecurity major was just more specialized, for sure, more about the theory really.

Speaker 1: 36:00

Okay, Cool. So let me ask you this when you picked the major cybersecurity, did you have an idea of what your end goal doing cyber was? It was just I want to be in cybersecurity.

Speaker 3: 36:10

I had no clue Like I didn't really know anything about cybersecurity when they opened the major. It just sound cool. And I mean I was one of those people that thought, oh, like, oh, I could be a hacker, like wearing the gray hoodie and the binary code going on, so it just sounded cool. So I had no clue what to do until, honestly, my senior year which in my opinion was way too late and I was going through a period really hard in my junior year where it seemed like all of my peers were like miles ahead of me, like they knew they wanted to be pen testers, they were good at it, and I just could not figure out how, how did they get here? We all have the same classes. I remember these people from two years ago. How did they develop so far? So my senior year is when I really like buckled down and was like okay, like, let me find my niche, let me find what I want to do, and I'm honestly still figuring that out. This is my first. The job I have now is my first job in the fields and it's kind of like a rotational program, so, which is really good. I love that I can do that, like spend a few months in a department and see if I like it, and then at the end of the program I get to choose which one I want to go in. So right now I'm doing digital forensics, which is cool. I don't know anything. I didn't know anything about digital forensics. That wasn't part of the curriculum. I think it wasn't elective. We'll get there, okay.

Speaker 1: 37:36

I didn't want you to give them too much sauce in the beginning, but because you remind me of something that most people struggle with, at least people of color. Are you a first gen graduate?

Speaker 3: 37:51

Yes.

Speaker 1: 37:53

And I always ask that because it always numbers and everything to say. But the first gen graduates do well enough, but most of the time not on a level like you said, some of your peers because nine times out of 10, they had mentors that either it was like a frat or something or they had people that were helping them say, hey, do this. And it's like my baby brothers. Right now he's telling me about some class he's got and that's gonna get him A plus or whatever. So that's cool. But I've been telling him for the last beginning of the year hey, get your certified cloud practitioner from AWS. When I was in school I didn't have anybody. So now I say, hey, I told them. I'll let you say you got to learn outside of school. Did you just do stuff in class or did you try to learn stuff outside of it?

Speaker 3: 38:40

I honestly just did stuff in class.

Speaker 1: 38:42

Yeah, but I'm saying that and I'm only doing this now, because a lot of people are geared to go to college but they don't understand in this field it's different than other fields. It's your curriculum is okay, it's like a foundation, unless they're giving you and I've passed some things that I presented to my past college because I saw like their curriculum was still bad there has to be things where it's more so you're working on in class that gives you to what you would do at a job, versus you teaching me all this theory, which is fine. Theory is fine, but how does that help me do get on the interview which I made a video where my podcast episode from last week was about how Gen Z struggles at the job and struggles in interviews. And they were getting on Gen Z, but I was like no, it's the school's fault, cause I was like even when I was in school, I took this business comm class but sure, they did my resume, but it wasn't really a tech resume. They didn't really show me how to interview. I didn't have a lot of jobs lined up after us cause I didn't know how to apply myself. I just was going to school. So I was like you can't get mad at them. You told them to go to school but you didn't prepare them for after school, and that's one of the trends I know and that's how I can point out a bias when they're trying to be biased towards Gen Z. I was like and number two, all your old people just need to go retired because y'all don't relate to us. And I was like I mean, yeah, I'm a millennial, but even like you said, you're born in the year I guess 2000 or 2000 babies. So there are still things to overlap in between us to where we are still similar in some ways. I don't like being micromanaged. I don't like you always being all up on me. I like to just let me know what I need to do and do it. And we also don't like the disrespect, the disrespect y'all used to be able to do to everybody else. That ain't gonna fly or you won't see us, cause they say it's like oh, we don't believe Gen Z is loyal. Of course we ain't loyal. Inflation been high every year. Why would we be loyal to y'all? People got families and mouths to feed Y'all. Be loyal to us, we'll be loyal to you. I was doing a vlog on the way here and I just was talking about how the girl from Cloudflare went viral about when she got let go and it wasn't her manager, it was somebody from HR, somebody she'd never met before. It's like outsourced. And I was talking about like the CEO responded to that and we're talking about well, we let like 40 people go, but we said like over a thousand plus sales people, and so he just looked at it as a numbers game. And that's why I tell people all the time I'm telling you now, younger, in your career, it's always a numbers game to them. It's not that you gotta take care of your family, it's not you gotta take care of yourself, or you may have bills, or you may be helping your own family. And I always tell people that's young and say look out for yourself, network, always, stay ahead of the game, pay attention to company financials so you can make sure you're ahead of the game. Yeah, but back to your schooling. At least some of the languages that you learn are still on job descriptions, like they were teaching us visual basic, and you don't see that on no job descriptions, no job descriptions. But I remember when we first talked, you talked about that. You did get a chance to do some internships, right? Yeah, let's talk about that because one advantage well, actually we'll make it here later, but I'm pretty sure you're on TikTok and you see all the discourse about you ain't gotta go to school, you ain't gotta go to school. While I agree you don't have to go to school, but when you look like us, you should go to school and it can help you get an internship. And I say school can only help you in the long run. So I tell people hey, if you can't go, get your a figure of role, get them to pay for school, go to school, get your degree, because you're gonna have to be good regardless. You don't have the luxury because we don't own, or I'm in charge of a lot of hiring decisions to put you on. So you gotta do what you gotta do to make yourself stand out.

Speaker 3: 42:39

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 42:40

And now a lot of people are just whatever they see on social media. They're doing the same thing. So a lot of people don't stand out anyway. So you gotta figure out how you're gonna stand out.

Speaker 3: 42:48

Exactly I agree.

Speaker 1: 42:49

So I wanna ask you about what internships did you do?

Speaker 3: 42:53

So I actually only did one internship for three years which I mean, at that point is it even an internship anymore but I actually was just an IT help desk intern for three years. That was my internship while I was in college.

Speaker 1: 43:09

Okay, was that at a? Was it like through the college, or was it like a major company or what?

Speaker 3: 43:18

It was a company I was contracted with the Department of Defense. They built simulations for the Air Force and I just found it randomly on Indeed and applied and got to interview the very next day. So I was very fresh in college when I got that job. I was stunned that I landed it and it was cool, but it was also it was very stagnant. I didn't feel like I was learning anything at all.

Speaker 1: 43:44

You was in GovTik, though.

Speaker 3: 43:45

Huh, technically you was in GovTik, I guess, so technically I was.

Speaker 1: 43:49

Did you have to get a clearance for it or no clearance?

Speaker 3: 43:51

No, no, because I was only just the intern.

Speaker 1: 43:54

so Got you, got you. I'm surprised, so what? And I'm. We're gonna drive this home, though, but what type of if you can remember type of things that you do at the help desk that you think possibly have helped you currently in your career, that anything that you took away from doing help desk? Or let me ask you this, because my channel is designed to also show the real behind some things. They're internships, where they say you are intern but you're not actually doing work. You just there. Was this a job where you just there?

Speaker 3: 44:30

I was just there and it was mainly just tickets and most of the tickets that came through I couldn't even work on because I didn't have like the Access, access or the authority to do it. So it kind of was more like clerical work. So that's why I made that face, cause it didn't do anything honestly. I mean it looked good on a resume and maybe I could have utilized and that's another thing. College, I don't I'm not, I don't know if that's like the college fall or my fall but I didn't really utilize the resources around me. I could have networked at that job and talk to people in the cyber, because there was a cyber security department. I could have networked through there. But I didn't do that, I didn't take advantage of it. So in that sense it really it didn't help me too much. Honestly, maybe my soft skills, but that's it.

Speaker 1: 45:20

Right, but I mean, you wouldn't know to do that. Yeah. You don't know what you don't know. So I don't want you to feel bad for that. I mean things out years ago I could have did differently. I didn't know you, just out there, winging it for the most part, and the opportunities were a little different back then. Now I tell people, I tell my brother in my time it's like, bro, just go ahead and do these things, I'll try to help you find something with this remote or whatever Cause, if you can get experience. Cause I was like you know what one of my brother's grades probably gonna be the best to get an internship. But I was like if you have the skills they can't deny you, you'll get you an entry level role so you can just be finishing school while you're already working. I was like that's the goal. I'm trying to get y'all to where y'all will pass me in your early career and not have to do what I did the first couple of years.

Speaker 3: 46:11

Yeah, it's so crazy that now you said that that's so true, like internships required so much, like just to even get an interview, like you have to have over a 3.0 GPA. The job I have now there was nothing of that sort, so it was harder to get an internship. Well, in my experience, I know it.

Speaker 1: 46:29

No, no most people this.

Speaker 3: 46:30

Yeah, it was harder to get an internship. That was my only internship. It was harder to get internships in school than it was to get interviews with actual jobs for full time positions.

Speaker 1: 46:40

Yeah, and most people. I don't know if you knew this, but a lot of people get those internships by their network. So last year, working at one of the companies I worked for it's a bigger company, it's a bigger financial company I remember when the intern not last year, year before that when all the interns were there like gobs the interns, I would say man, jp Morgan got a lot of interns here and it's like so either they applied or they know some people and that's something too that people don't know Just apply. Like you said, you sell the job on Indeed and you apply. Sometimes that's all they take to find an internship is applying and you may or may not be successful. The worst thing they could tell you is no Rejection will happen. Most of the time it's gonna be a lot of rejections before you get a yes.

Speaker 3: 47:22

Yes.

Speaker 1: 47:23

So you do the, we'll say the. I was just there internship. So the last time that you do that internship was, we'll say I guess the last time I'm going back and say you're senior year, I guess change. Then when you say, okay, I'm about to get out of school, what am I going to do? Because I want to get a job? So what did you decide to do that was going to help you get a job after school.

Speaker 3: 47:52

Okay, yeah, so I had joined a white. There was a club at my school called oh my gosh White Hatters. It was like an ethical hacking club and that really is what pushed me, because I was comparing myself to everybody else that was in the club. Like I said before, they were like miles ahead of me. But I am very grateful for that club because it opened the door to a lot of things that I just did not know about and that sparked my interest in cloud. So January of my in the year 2022, that's the year I graduated January of that year I decided I was going to study for my AWS certified cloud practitioner and I got it and that really was like the momentum I needed to like keep going. So after I got that certification, I was like, okay, like now I know I can, I can probably apply myself, and so from there I was just doing side things on my own, looking at YouTube videos of people talking about cybersecurity. I felt like time was running out because I was about to graduate and, unfortunately, my mother passed May of that year before I, before I could graduate, so she didn't get to see me walk across the stage and she wanted me to. She was my biggest fan and she always, always used to push me into like doing bigger things. But I was a rebellious teenager thinking she's nagging me, so I realized too late that she meant well and that she had the right idea. So after that events I just buckled down and I really applied myself and so I did a bootcamp. It was like a free bootcamp for only like three months and through the bootcamp I obtained my CompTIA cybersecurity analyst plus certification and that really was like was sealed the deal for me. I credit the bootcamp I mean, of course, my bootcamp was it. It's called per-scolless. Check it out. It's specifically for people of color, to help people of color get into tech. You don't have to have a degree, it didn't cost any money, but I was in school doing that at the same time, so it was very tough. But I do credit the bootcamp with helping my cybersecurity career because, like you said, college was good and having degree is what ultimately got me the job, because it was required, but it was just the theory that I was learning in college. The bootcamp, that's how I was getting my hands on experience. So, yeah, that year was really just grind time, and then I got my job offer a week before I graduated.

Speaker 1: 50:42

So yeah, what did I want to touch on? There was a lot that you said, first of all, about the cloud practitioner. Funny that you say that. Somebody tagged me in a TikTok when I'm my friends and he was asking me about some advice that my guy, kyrie, was giving and he was advising people the two certs he likes people to give maybe Sec Plus and the cloud practitioner and I was like I agree with the cloud practitioner. I don't really agree too much on Sec Plus just because I'm indifferent about come to your certification. Oh, I actually like the CICI Plus. I got that what 2018 or something like that. I got it while I was working in the SOC, so I actually liked that one. I think it's a. I think it's. At the time it was one of the best blue team certifications until security blue team came with blue team number one. Now, if you are one of the state blue team and want to take your probably like skills on the next level, I will probably highly suggest security blue team. Okay, because this is a practical certification. So, unlike the memorization similar to whatever you've been doing rotating their work, it's covering all those domains that you're like already doing now, so that'd be cool.

Speaker 3: 51:48

Okay Security blue team.

Speaker 1: 51:50

So that's cool that you you got that certification and I like, did you do the AWS one? Like, did you pick a certain course? Like for me, I found two instructors on Udemy and I just followed what they did. So they had me setting up stuff in the cloud and I was answering the practice test and then helped out because I needed. I was looking at the cloud like S3 buckets and VPCs and instances through our SIM all the time, but I didn't really know what I was looking at. So I need to learn something about the cloud, so yeah, I learned through a cloud guru. Okay.

Speaker 3: 52:24

I used him and I think I also did like a Udemy course, but I found the exam like not that hard to study for the practice test?

Speaker 1: 52:33

Yeah, other than the exam.

Speaker 3: 52:35

Yeah, and I did want to follow like an AWS pathway. I still do. I just kind of put it off but I did just like settle on a pathway of like AWS certs to do so, like I wanted to get the security professional one. So the path I was going to do was the cloud practitioner and then solutions architect and then whatever came after that Especially security. Yeah, I just only made it to the cloud practitioner, but I'll get back at it.

Speaker 1: 53:07

Yeah, but, like I said, that's still a good choice. And then couple of that with a degree in the size of plus, that's, that's pretty good. A lot of people coming out of school will just have a degree, or they may or may not have a certification, like for me. I was like my grades ain't good and the mentor at the time was like you should get your security plus because he works for the government. So, they're big on come to you. And I got security plus, but then it was like what next?

Speaker 3: 53:31

Everybody has the security plus.

Speaker 1: 53:32

But see back then though. Cyber. This is what that's 10 years ago, yeah. Oh okay. I graduated in November of 2013 from undergrad A little over 10 years really, because then you had November, january and it started 2014. I started working my help this job in May of 2014. But back then it was few and far between them, like getting cybersecurity jobs and I was just had back then. And this is the reason I tell people don't allow you resume. I had, like Nessus, linux, wireshark. I had forgot stuff I had on there, but some of that stuff I couldn't really talk about in the interview. I just had it on there Because one of the other minutes was like hey, y'all throw this on your resume because he worked for a century at the time and that didn't really work out for me. And the reason why it didn't work out is because of my resume. I was showing but I wasn't telling, so I didn't have any projects. I wouldn't show on what I use Nessus for, what I use Linux for, what are the other things I know how to do, but what I could have did the reason why I asked you earlier about information systems I did actually have this class where we had to design a network for a three-story building and what type of stuff we would use. That would have been a good project to talk about. We had a capstone where we had to do a system analysis and design and we made like an inventory system for the bowling alley. So I had some stuff I could have talked about. I just didn't know, and that's why I tell people they didn't say hey, talk about these projects and make sure you know, take them down. Nobody in those classes helped me with that. And now when I talk to or do consoles with people like yourself there in school or trying to transition, I'm like so what projects have you done? I was like, cause you're going to have to show them something if you don't have any type of requisite experience and it's, I mean, it's hard to do that. I would say, why do I find projects or whatever? So but that's cool. So after the boot camp, how many jobs did you start applying to?

Speaker 3: 55:24

I like countless, probably over a hundred. I was applying to jobs just to apply at one point, because it was like it's something has to land. I graduate in like two months and I have no job prospects. And actually, after the boot camp, I went to a tech conference through my school, the society of the society of Hispanic professional engineers, and I even applied to jobs there. I interviewed with jobs on the spot Um, nothing. I had a few offers, but it was more like IT help desk, and that's also what the boot camp pushed was IT help desk, because it was geared towards people trying to get into tech. It wasn't meant for people who are already in college for it. Um, and I knew that my skills were beyond IT help desk. Like the first interview, the first interview I did land, my first technical interview ever, um was for an IT help desk position and when it came down to the question of like, okay, so like, what's your salary range, I was going off with what I was making in college at the, at the GovTech internship, uh, which was about I don't even know. I think around like $24 an hour, which was, which was amazing.

Speaker 1: 56:47

Rich in college.

Speaker 3: 56:48

So I was comparing that to this position. So I I I gave them a range that probably was outside of the range of like a normal IT help desk position. I said 60,000 and he was like no, and he actually told me um, you know, your resume is very impressive, you seem great, You're very smart, Um, but honestly, you're, you're lucky to have gotten this interview as a woman.

Speaker 1: 57:16

Wow, yeah, and that was my first ever technical interview. What was this? What was this person?

Speaker 3: 57:21

He was palm colored and I felt like he wanted to say, as a black woman, that's what I felt like he wanted to say Um. And so after hearing that, I could have let that discourage me, especially without being my first technical interview my, you know, that was my first experience but I knew what I had, I knew the skills that I had and I knew my knowledge and I knew that I could apply myself more. Um, so I didn't let that discourage me. I went on more interviews. After that, I landed more interviews. I really studied how, like a cheat sheet of all these tech, random tech facts, like random lines of, like Linux code, I mean I was, like, prepared for anything an interview had to throw at me. Um. And then I landed this position at this job, which is, um, an entry level cybersecurity position, which is what I knew I could do. So I'm glad it didn't let that deter me, or else I I wouldn't have been here.

Speaker 1: 58:14

I want to talk about that, though I've. I get a lot of flack a lot of times cause you are my primary guest women, especially women of color, and it's a reason. These are the type of stuff that they go through, and he probably felt he can get that off cause he was young and he felt like he was naive. Now, in future references, if somebody ever say that you should say you should be looking at accepted to interview with y'all. Cause how you going to tell me that? But I only tell you that is because I've worked for some prominent fortune 500. My faith, they were probably fortune 50 companies. One of these companies at a time told somebody that I should have been happy that I was working there. No-transcript, they ain't say it to my face. They knew they didn't say it to my face because I was gonna tell them something. So they feel like that oh, you should be happy not knowing that. Hey, whatever this is paying, I've already made one of this anyway. You really wasted my time, which is why I teach clients now hey, get the range for you to get on the phone. Hopefully they give it to you. If not, I'm passed, if it's something I don't like but it may fit somebody else's range, I'll send them to people I know and help them get interviews or something like that, but I don't waste time with that if it's not my range and if they ever tell me I'm lucky. No, y'all, look at my great job, my presence.

Speaker 3: 59:31

I'm gonna catch you. And he still had the nerve to offer me the position. I obviously had declined it because it was the principle of the things at that point, I think you should have reported him, though he shouldn't have been I did.

Speaker 1: 59:42

Yeah, I did. Hopefully he got fired.

Speaker 3: 59:44

They were, I don't really know. Even the company was partnered through the boot camp. So I told my mentor at the boot camp what they said. So I don't know what happened beyond that, but they were very upset for me that that was said to me, so I'll be upset too, I'll be type pressing the plotter job just to talk to him. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:00:06

Pull up on the money, birdman, but some respect to my name. Yeah, understand me.

Speaker 3: 1:00:10

It's like I was on a mission to like prove not just to myself that I could do it, but to prove him wrong, even though of course he would have never known I landed where I did. But I felt like spiritually he would know that I proved him wrong.

Speaker 1: 1:00:23

So Let me see.

Speaker 4: 1:00:27

Tell him get it off your chest, birdman. I said it already. I ain't got to talk to him.

Speaker 1: 1:00:31

Cause I don't understand the angle, like what I said it already, so why come here?

Speaker 4: 1:00:35

I did it already I'm here, so what's happening? I mean it's all good, but I'm saying why, why, why I'm here, what's happening?

Speaker 1: 1:00:41

I'm all good but I'm saying why come here Just to cut us up? I'm here.

Speaker 4: 1:00:44

What's happening, man, I wanted to see you, I wanted to talk to you and your man and your face, absolutely. You understand me. I knew a few places you was at. I could have pulled up, but I don't think that was gangster. I wanted to come, look in your face like a man and tell you how I feel. Okay, you understand me Straight up, like a man.

Speaker 1: 1:01:01

So what's the?

Speaker 4: 1:01:02

issue. It ain't no issue. If it was an issue, you'll feel me. I just come to let y'all know stop putting some respect on my name. You understand me when y'all saying my name put some respect on it. Did you pull up on Ross that way? Or trick, daddy man? I'm pulling up on you, nigga, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:01:16

I'm the radio guy. Why pull up on the radio guy, don't act tough with the radio guy.

Speaker 4: 1:01:19

I hate my nigga. Y'all finished or y'all done? I ain't got.

Speaker 1: 1:01:23

I can't wait to hit somebody with that. Are y'all finished or y'all done? Yeah, so, and we will not be mentioning any company names to protect you and protect this interview from not going down. With that being said, when did you so your role? You said it's an entry level role and it's a rotational program. So how many? So what was the first rotation that you did?

Speaker 3: 1:01:48

Incident response.

Speaker 1: 1:01:49

Okay, let's talk about that, because I love IR. You do IR is a rush. It's especially it depends too, like if you're in a place where, like something comes in and like the sock or something can't handle it, like it's perfect. So was your IR set up like? I don't know if you guys had like maybe either internal sock or outsour sock, or you guys work with the sock and then, or you work as a sock and do IR. Like, how was the IR set up for you?

Speaker 3: 1:02:19

It may be the case in other locations with the company, but here in Dallas, the Dallas office is very, very small, like the cybersecurity team as a whole. There's probably only about a dozen of us. Very lean. Yeah, so there was. There's none of the outsourcing, or like. It's literally like just us Okay.

Speaker 1: 1:02:40

So yeah, it's always like a, it's like a fire team, then I guess it's like everything's like together. So how was that experience for you?

Speaker 3: 1:02:48

Honestly it was. It was better than what I. I don't really know what I was anticipating, but I think having like a smaller team that's my more close knit worked out it can. I mean, it's a double edge story because you have people that don't really ever come into the office, so then you're like kind of I've been in there alone sometimes but I think it built the connections more Like my coworkers all of them are like my mentors, they have no problems helping me with a problem or a question. And I think that may have been harder to achieve at a location where the office is like a lot larger, because with the program we all, we all start at the same time, like everyone else who's on the rotational program and I talked to them in the different locations Like I have friends in the Chicago office or in the Boston office and it just seems like their experience is different. Everyone's having a good experience, but it seems like that one-on-one and like strong connection build isn't isn't as present in the bigger locations.

Speaker 1: 1:03:56

Okay, and you probably answered this already, but do you feel that being hybrid has actually helped you out early on in your career Versus just being straight remote? Because we see a lot of young I don't want to say kids, I'm sorry young adults? They want to be remote. But and this comfort person that, of course, yeah, I was doing help desk, like my first couple of years. However, we all was in office, so you are able to put the column, you go, tap on somebody's shoulder and ask them something. Or when I was got my first couple of sock jobs, who was all there in person or what? Some of the scene was remote, but they were always quick to respond. But you can get more growth that way, and not only that. Put you a little secret. I talk about this all the time. Visibility you get visibility sometimes when the leaders come through and they see that you're at the office and some people don't know that because a lot of people think that if I'm very good at my job and I just work and go home, that means I will get the promotion. I'm here to tell you that is not true. So I'm here to tell you that hey, that sounds good, but you're going to have to network, you're going to have to be visible so people can know who you are, and you got to be your biggest champion on things that you've accomplished. But I wanted to ask you about that just working that's helping you out and at a high level. Can you talk about anything like any new things that maybe you learned about cyber that you possibly that school or the boot camp didn't prepare you for?

Speaker 3: 1:05:33

Yeah, so well. First, I 100% agree with the hybrid aspect. Yeah, it's nice to break from home, but being in person was really the only way I learned how to use the tools that we use. Like there would be no way that a Zoom call would have helped me be able to learn these tools that I've never heard of before, never seen of before, especially when it since now I'm on digital forensics especially when it comes to digital forensics like there would have just been no way. So, to answer your question of like what I've learned literally everything. I've learned what digital forensics is, what it meant. I learned, like what all goes on in incident response, not even just like the technical aspects of things, but the teamwork aspect of it Communication.

Speaker 1: 1:06:16

part of it is the big one. Hey, do we have what we need? What's the update on this? Who we need to link into this incident? Because what a lot of people don't even know is, a lot of times the breach ain't even on your company. It's a company that you work with that's got an incident and now y'all checking them, now, making sure none of y'all data is at play. Like, what type of fate does it have on you? Like, these are all the things that you have to worry about and considering. Like all the breaches that happen like every week that I'm reading about, it's always something small. I want to ask you because we'll get on the DR side real quick I mean, we're a DF, part of DFIR, but when you were doing incident response, what tools were you using?

Speaker 3: 1:07:00

So we were using like well, I don't know if I say ring a bell, but like Axiom X-Waze we had, there's a tool that one of my coworkers actually developed that we use, called Velofseraptor, or he helped develop it, velofseraptor ASDF. But that's another thing I wanted to say was that I'm sure it's different across different companies, but with this company, the incident response, like the stuff we, the stuff I was doing with incident response, is the exact same stuff I'm doing in digital forensics. It's a little different, but we're using the same tools.

Speaker 1: 1:07:35

It's a lot of overlap. I think the only difference is for digital forensics, you probably have a little bit more time about really doing the analysis of the memory or something you is, because it could take a while to get all that and really look through those registries and those processes seeing exactly what's going on. But it's a skill set. I think I was telling you that when we first met I was like you learning digital forensics is a bag, it's a niche bag, like everybody don't know forensics. I promise you I know, yeah, I'm just like learning some other things about forensics and that's pretty like cool, like one of my weaknesses about why I didn't get one rose, like, hey, I have a weakness with forensics, specifically when it comes to Linux. So if you can learn Linux, then you already know how to do forensics for that Windows and any other operations, but then not, let alone you know how to do forensics for the cloud. You good to go. So those are the things like when I'm talking to people I am trying to tell them. I'm gonna say I know you're trying to go chase the money and which we haven't even talked about there yet, which I need to ask you, cause I really I rarely. Sometimes, if I know I need to make the money at focal point of episode, I'll bring it up, but a lot of times I'm just telling people about hey, just enjoy the ride. A couple of episodes ago, I was just telling people how, like back in my day, back in my day, all this one going on, you just got your hair down and you enjoying the journey, tunnel vision. If you remember that, even that right now you'll be fine because you're I found you from Twitter. So you see, like, of course, like some people maybe I interact with, or some people that you follow from afar, the type of lives that they're living or type of things they're doing, the places they're going, you'll get there. It's just your time to put the work in, cause they definitely didn't start out like that either. And then, like Mark, I keep you saying like a lot of them, either contractors doing, some are doing C2C, some just, you know, over employed, you know it is what it is, but you'll get there. But a lot of people are trying to. It's not common, at least in cyber, to be able to do that when your first role and some people are doing it, but they're not really ex-excelling anything Like. My advice to you right now is like hey, from here on out and I don't know if you've been doing this or not, I don't know if you have a mentor or not you can consider me your unofficial mentor. It's like anything that you do, big or small, that you help with at that company. Now you write it down everything.

Speaker 3: 1:09:55

That's actually how I landed the role. Someone who worked at the company found me on Twitter and I was doing what you said. I was just documenting random stuff that I was working on. I kind of gave up on the not I don't wanna say gave up, but the way I am as a person, I'm very much like go with the flow and if I feel like something is, I kind of just leave it up to God or the universe to let things work out. So I had started to just talk about the stuff I was doing, the certs that I was studying for little home projects I had. I would just tweet about it randomly, put it on my LinkedIn, and someone was watching me the whole time, keeping up with my tweets and keeping up with my journey the whole time, and DM'd me, said, hey, the work that you've been doing is like very impressive. I wanna refer you to the job, to the company I work at. And then I ended up getting the job. So I tell my friends, anyone that asks me for advice. I tell them all the time, like, talk about what you do, document your journey, work on independent projects, because that's really what's going to sell you, like you can get the certs, but really the certs at the end of the day just prove that you know how to study and pass the test. Companies care about the hands-on and how you apply what you're learning. So that's what I did. So I think you're spot on with that. That's how I got my job.

Speaker 1: 1:11:16

Yeah, no, I'm just audience. This is like the third or fourth person that told you they was documenting stuff. And you saying you're documenting your stuff on Twitter actually reminds me of Day Spring, when he was documenting. Well, he already has his YouTube document stuff, but he's also talking on Twitter and I wanna say that's how he got his job at Datadog at the time. He's no longer there. But any social media, let them know what your expertise is and what you're working on. Like you just never know, cause a lot of people are doing it backwards. They'll try to get referrals from people they never said two words to.

Speaker 3: 1:11:47

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 1:11:48

Now some people will say, sure, cause they maybe just want the money. I'm not giving you a referral if I don't know who you are, cause you're going to be a reflection of me, so I have to at least know you a little bit, what your goals are, what you even know before I decided to refer you, and so that's a little bit a tidbit of advice for y'all as well. It's like stop just trying to get referrals from people, stop. It's a lot of people on LinkedIn telling people hey, get these people referrals. No, when I'm gonna refer somebody I don't know, you can make me look horrible. They'll never take my referries again. One of my last companies like I refer so many people cause I did a lot of good work, my referries did good work, so I was good. Anytime I needed to refer people, they was always getting jobs. So that's a big thing. Certain people only refer people. I've been referred to jobs from my peers Well, at their companies, cause they're killing it and they interview me and I was like, oh, no wonder he's killing it, cause they're killing it, and that's how it goes. That's the other thing I've been talking about some of my with my clients or something like this Like building that outside of your social media following and all that, your internal circle of networking people that do different things in the industry. That's how you stay ahead. That's how, if they're elevating and you're elevating, hey, I'm finna take over this director role at such and such company. I know you need to do this. They give me like fully ready to build the team out. I want you to come over here. You know, and your price? That type of stuff happens. You know how I know it happens. Most of these C-Souls, c-level people, go from company to company. Everybody's just friends and they start bringing up people they know. But get rid of teens and bring in their own teen if they want. Happens all the time and people don't pay attention to that. But here's something I had wanted to ask you about that I had on the thing and I figured it'd be good. Now we can do a little segue into it. What's your morning routine for going into the office?

Speaker 3: 1:13:36

Well, the days that I do actually go into the office, I wake up, do a little bit of stretching. I might eat breakfast. Sometimes I don't, and I like to go in on Mondays because I have to start my week on a productive note or else the energy is just down for the rest of the week. So I like to go in on Mondays and Wednesdays. I'm usually the only person there on Mondays, which is fine by me, but yeah, that's how my day starts. I start my shift around nine in the day around four.

Speaker 1: 1:14:14

Okay, do you go get anything like Starbucks or anything? Or you're a tea girl, water girlie. What type of girlie are you?

Speaker 3: 1:14:21

I'm definitely a tea girl. I like my chamomile tea with lavender. That's my go-to tea. Now that it's cold, I might do the throat tea, the eucalyptus throat medicine tea. That's my chamomile tea.

Speaker 1: 1:14:36

I got that, the lemon, the peppermint and something else. My go-to right now is I just bought a Nespresso machine a couple weeks ago, oh see.

Speaker 3: 1:14:47

I'll drink coffee, but I'm not a coffee drinker.

Speaker 1: 1:14:51

The Nespressos they are because they only come in certain capsules, but they're good. You can make you a squeeze it. I put up one up on my IG story a while back because I got some clear cups, so I want to show off some stuff whenever I do a day in the life video and it's fire.

Speaker 3: 1:15:09

Maybe I'll get into it. Maybe I have to grow up a little bit.

Speaker 1: 1:15:13

I definitely feel like an old man. I have a mug but I ate on it for my name, and I have a subscribe mug too. But I wanted to know if I could ask you this, because you brought it up we talked about salary a little bit In this rotational program. What type of salary were you able to either negotiate or get?

Speaker 3: 1:15:33

So unfortunately, I was so blown away by what they offered me that I didn't even negotiate. I just accepted right away the position. The inter-roll rotational program position starts at 90K. That's what I was offered. So going from being turned down from 60K to being offered 90K off the jump was I was like, yes, I'll take it. Looking back, I probably definitely could have, I should have negotiated. I probably could have negotiated for something higher, but I mean I will offer babies. So the salary still changed my life. I'm still very grateful I was going to ask you about that.

Speaker 1: 1:16:13

That was me I went from. At the knock I was like 50,000. And my first stock position offered me, I think all in all I think I was getting like 78,000. So I was like, shoot, I'm up, I get a better apartment. I had traded in the whip at the time and got a sedan because the Mustang was drinking too much gas.

Speaker 3: 1:16:34

I loved it, but it was drinking too much gas.

Speaker 1: 1:16:37

But these are the real conversations I like to have because, like I said, everybody not making 90K If I pull up the analytics right now, everybody not making 90K especially your age range, your demographic you're making, you're in the probably the top what five or 15% or whatever of women money you're making, because typically women making like 40s, some K or something like that.

Speaker 3: 1:17:04

And yeah, and it's like, of course, like like six figure salary is like everyone's dream goal, but like this I'm living well, like I can support myself and still do things for fun. I live comfortably and at the end of the rotational program we do get like a promotion, like an increase.

Speaker 1: 1:17:26

So Did you get, did they offer, any like type of sign on bonus?

Speaker 3: 1:17:31

Yes, 5K sign on bonus Because they have offices everywhere and I chose to relocate from Florida. They did not give me a relocation package, so that I had to fully do so what made you want to pick Dallas? I just heard that when I heard, but I did some research. There's this website called CyberSeek.

Speaker 1: 1:17:51

Yeah, CyberSeekorg.

Speaker 3: 1:17:52

Yeah, and so I was. I was just plugging in the places that I would like to go. It was between this, it was between Dallas or DC, and DC just seemed like way too big of a move from Florida so, and I have an aunt that lives here, so I had someone. I had someone to kind of push the the Dallas, you know what part does she stay in?

Speaker 1: 1:18:13

McKinney Okay.

Speaker 3: 1:18:15

Yeah, so you sound like me.

Speaker 1: 1:18:16

When I moved out here, I moved in with my aunt. She stayed in Little Ham.

Speaker 3: 1:18:19

Oh, okay, yeah, so, and I just researched and I've like all the tech hubs, dallas was always on the lists, not necessarily top of the list, but it was always on the list and it's booming now.

Speaker 1: 1:18:33

Oh, yeah, yeah. So I think people are asleep, like people thought I feel to be funny, but people thought Austin was that how you say that girl, that girl? Yeah, they thought, they thought that's what Austin is, but it's really Dallas.

Speaker 3: 1:18:45

It really is Dallas. No, the same thing. I heard people were like, well, why not Austin? Austin probably has more opportunity. And I was like, I mean, dallas seems more like the vibe and uh, companies are leaving Austin. Yeah, and people ask me all the time well, why not Houston? And it's like you know, I'm sure Houston is great, I've been to Houston but, um, I wanted to be around more. Like Dallas gives me like, the more of, like the young professional vibe you can still have the social life. You can still have the social life here in Dallas. But I wanted to be around, like more goal or not, I don't want to say people in Houston aren't goal oriented. No, say it you know what I mean. Like Houston's like a good time and it just reminds me of just a Texas version of Atlanta, and Atlanta also has good opportunities. But I was not moving to Atlanta, so why would I move to Houston? Yeah, yeah, so Dallas was just more. My speed is slower and that's more of I was more of the vibe I wanted to go for. I've been in college for four years. I got the social life out the way.

Speaker 1: 1:19:49

It's time for something. You saying that because we'll get back on a professional tip. I tell people that I mean we are in the times where people just say, well, bump school or just do WGU and then be finishing that. I do think going to school away from home is a pivotal part of your maturation process as a young person, because you get to really discover who you are, things about yourself you didn't know while you're at home that were mass. Because you go to school. You rich your parents, different people you may or may want to interact with. You learn so much how to survive, like I think a lot of people are missing a lot of their character development because they're not going to school. That might be a hot take. I might put that on there. It might be a hot take. I think a lot of people are missing that I mean.

Speaker 3: 1:20:38

I agree. I agree. College definitely taught me like about the world around me, the people around me, about how other people are raised, Like you don't. You are raised a certain way and you have certain values. College exposes you to how other people were raised and how other people values develop, which is very important to navigate through life. So I would agree with you College definitely is a catalyst for learning about others and yourself. So I would say that, too Cool.

Speaker 1: 1:21:16

Now we'll get back into, even though you said you're doing a lot of actually. I'll ask you this and then we'll go into forensics In your definition, what would you Define incident? Response to S.

Speaker 3: 1:21:31

So to me, well, just from what I've been doing in my experience in it, incident response is more so focused on like I wanna say like the recovery and mitigation of like. When an attack happens, I'm naturally pairing it with digital forensics because that's just how I'm experiencing it. But the way it's different from digital forensics is, like you said, forensics is more so like analyzing the data. You have more time to analyze the data. It's not so much like we'll give recommendations on what the company should do, but incident response is more focused on that, like the recovery aspect of it.

Speaker 1: 1:22:14

You gotta stop believing Like we found patient zero. We're gonna let the forensics team know yo, we send this to y'all. We found patient zero. But I always liken it to like fireman and cops are first on the scene. So we're gonna say those are the SOC analysts. Now we have the fire investigator, we had the detectives, we had the paramedics and I may be missing people, but those are the incident responders, because now they're coming to something it's already been notified. Hey, this is an incident, we need this people. So we're doing the investigations or we are containing the hosts. Paramedics are stopping the leading all the sudden and then after paramedic, you take them to the hospital. Hospital's gonna be the forensics people. They're gonna do the deeper dive on the patient.

Speaker 3: 1:23:04

Yeah, like a lot of times the cases that come through, they've already been attacked and they've already done the stuff. A lot of times and I'm talking about the digital forensics side now a lot of times they just want us to make sure everything's like good or if there's anything else that we see, or was there something that was missed? Or sometimes a company. There's been a company that's been attacked more than once. Like that happens way more time way more than I thought. Like a company was like yeah, we've had this happen to us back in July and it's like what? Or we've had this happen three times before, so Sound like octa right there. Yes, so that's what I've been getting a lot in the digital forensics. On the incident response side it was more active cases Like we just saw this come through over the weekend or we were seeing really strange activity Like so that's what the incident response side was more like. So yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 1: 1:24:05

I tried to make it. That's one of the skills I think I developed by my audience. I can take something that could. Somebody could explain it super technical, but I'm like I'm gonna make this. You can't not misunderstand what I just said by the paramedics taking them to the hospital for the deep dive from the doctors. You can't misunderstand that, what? So I think I asked you this earlier but, like for me, I've dealt with a myriad of different type of activity Based on the industry too. You'll find out in your experience, based on the industry, the company you work for you'll start seeing different attack types. So you may eventually get used to the stuff you're seeing. Because it's like I'm used to all this and you go to a different industry, it's like, ah, so their attack vectors are different because of this or the way that they're confined, because every company does not have everything set up to be, as the network, hardened as it should be, because a lot of people's minds, like you, can stunt creativity or we want you to be free, and so now you make your IR team and the sock and forensics, you make the pen test and everybody got to work harder because y'all don't want to do the foundation and stuff. We need them to keep the place secure. So there are a lot of things and the crazy thing is it's still the number one thing that always trips people up. It's not the technology, it's your people. That's the weak link. The sophisticated social engineering. People are watching everything people do, they are and they may not even go at you first, they may go to. I was watching the podcast. I forgot the name of it but it was with. I want to say the guy was the C, the CISO or some of his company, abnormal Security, and he was talking about how the biggest trends that we actually see with attacks are not really super sophisticated attacks just yet. They are more so fishing. But they don't initially kind of start off with sending you a link. They just send an email trying to get a conversation going with you. And he was talking about how one time the attackers knew that he was Navy Federal for his bank, so they reached out to his wife and like oh yeah, we're seeing all this blah, blah, blah, but the wife is leery of it. It's like this don't make sense or whatever. And the person sent the link. The link don't match up with whatever they send, but you gotta think about it. It might not work on you, but somebody you know they might say oh yeah, we see that you're friends and you typically go here. We have something going on the account, just like the fake USPS stuff that's trash. But people who are actually going to take time to make it look legitimate, like if you're gonna try to like smish me through the text, like try to figure out the code they send me when they send me like in my face so you can make it look like you, the same people, if you're gonna be smart but you're not, yeah. But those are the things that I've been seeing too, like fishing has been the biggest one. Like fishing, qr codes or getting people those are other things. Like people, sometimes it just won't slow down or they'll just pay attention to somebody as a high profile. I was like, oh, I see that you guys are a merchant or a vendor of these people. We may just compromise the merchant to get y'all. Like that's what they do. They're not typically going at the big fish first. We're gonna get them first and then we just gonna keep on responding to you like everything, good, that's when we're gonna try to get you, then we're gonna try to extra track your data from that way. That's how you do it. So all the stuff that we sometimes see that people do on the shows that we like to watch, that's what that was comes over into the digital world.

Speaker 3: 1:27:34

When it comes to cybersecurity, yeah, I've had cases that I've worked on. It was a whole range of that. It was the range of the QR codes which, if I'm being honest, to the everyday person is very believable, especially when you're doing the MFA, like because these employees, when you sign into your computer, sometimes you have to send a push notification. But the email that I saw that for a case we were gonna be business email compromise was with a QR code and it was, like it says, over changing our verification use QR codes. Now we're using QR codes now and the person did it. So it's like, okay, that was one and then. But we also I've also seen ones where they were specifically crafted for a specific person, like they even emailed. They emailed other people in the company pretending to be that person, referring to old emails from the past, like hey, can we have an update on this meeting? And the person will respond with the update, and then it would go into more questions. That's like wait, hold on a second. Let me make sure this is actually you, because I feel like we've already talked about this before. So, yeah, you see a whole range of that. You see the ones where it's just the spam, phishing or whatever, but then you see the ones where it's tailored to you.

Speaker 1: 1:28:59

Yeah, we seen sometimes one time when the company kind of warned us like hey, don't hack, there's something in the subject line like it was, and we we know that's how we know that it was a business email compromised. But then, like that just reminded me of my days in the sock. I was replying to somebody and the company we were monitoring they pretty much had that account compromised and the only thing I kind of picked up on that was phishing about them is they didn't have the right signature. They should have. And this is so people that are interviewing trying to get an IR, a sock roll. If you want to kind of stand out, of course know your stuff, but being super technical ain't always the answer. Like, some of the stuff can be found very simply through research. You can look through the ticketing system. You can find somebody this don't add up but they want to ask you something about phishing or saying if you knew somebody was compromised, what would you look at? Say, hey, I'll pitch them to their signature, see if their signature is the same to everybody else's Cause. A lot of times it's not. A lot of times they don't attach the right signature and it's kind of like a red flag and you don't know who they are. Or if you got doubts, call them Like nah, I didn't say nothing. Okay, let's go ahead and reset this password, exit all the sessions and see what happened, and then that's when they're gonna start. I am gonna do all that the remediation, containment and then we're gonna send it to forensics and we're gonna tell you what you need to do.

Speaker 3: 1:30:15

Yeah, and even if, like the emails kind of cause you know, some people have thousands and thousands of emails to go through. Even when we're not really finding anything in the emails, it could be like their sign-in activity. That's like or like, if you're using Outlook, why do all of a sudden you have like a Mac sign-in? So those are also clues to that we use in addition to the emails too.

Speaker 1: 1:30:40

Yeah, and that's when we work with detections and IM team, where we put in rules to say, hey, we're gonna block the usual sign-ins and we're gonna make them say, hey, is this you?

Speaker 3: 1:30:51

Yeah, yeah, especially when, like, their sign-in activity is like all over the country. A lot of the times we have to verify with the company like, is that normal for the cause? People travel. So we have to confirm did this person travel to this state in these X days? But if it's from a country that's like like. Nigeria or even, like the Netherlands, sometimes that's pretty much always bad, still verify, but yeah. So some things over the course of you doing case after case after case and seeing IOCs that pop up, all the time. Look at you oh.

Speaker 1: 1:31:32

Look at you. Let me find out you be on the stand-ups.

Speaker 3: 1:31:37

It's seeing IOCs that pop up all the time. You kind of just know what to look for. Of course, every case is different. There's always something new, like the QR code. For one of my coworkers they'd never seen that before. That was like their first time seeing a hack through the QR code actually being used in real life. But most of the times you know what to look for. You know certain countries are bad, certain ISPs are bad, and then of course, we use like virus total to see if certain IP addresses have been flagged. So it's not just off the dome that we do this Like we. I think it's like a misconception, like people. Did you want to talk about that? No, no, no.

Speaker 1: 1:32:22

Lee, I'm here, I'm just a host, like talk about whatever you want to talk about.

Speaker 3: 1:32:25

Yeah, like I think it's a misconception that that I mean, of course we're smart, but we use Google all the time. There's like websites that we go on to double check or make sure that things are malicious, because we don't always know. So, yeah, that's all I wanted to say.

Speaker 1: 1:32:44

Do y'all have a sandbox that y'all use?

Speaker 3: 1:32:48

If we do, I'm not aware of it.

Speaker 1: 1:32:50

Yeah, you might have like. Well, in a sense, the virus total is kind of like a virtual sandbox, but some third actors know when, like, if they put the link in the sandbox it's not going to do right. Well, not necessarily a sandbox, but like, for example, you got like URL, scan the IO that's one that people use a lot, you know scan it and tell you what the redirects are and get you a screenshot virus total browsing Joe sandbox. But then sometimes you need your actual own sandbox to where you can detonate it, where you can probably do a little bit malware. Well, if it's malware, you can analyze what happens when the malware starts.

Speaker 3: 1:33:26

Oh, that's probably on the testing side. Probably does that. But what I've been doing in DFIR we don't do that at this company and testing is in part of my rotation.

Speaker 1: 1:33:41

So fortunately, Gotcha, I'll send you. Well, let's just say it right here too, I'll send you TCM security stuff. Oh yeah. Especially. I don't know if you did that malware analysis course, but no, I did the Windows escalation, rivers Exclusion for Banners. Yeah, so they got that. They got the Python joint. I've been busy so I haven't finished my detection engineering course on there, but they got that on there too. But that malware analysis course is going to make you very sharp when it comes to forensics. So, that'll be probably the one I would recommend for you to do, cause the instructor is cool. We got discord, you can sign up on. So for your personal computer, you got PC, you got a Mac. Pc. Okay, cool Cause Mac has made it hard to even do virtual box stuff, like cause on the malware analysis course you got to set up your environment, then you have to segment it. Well, on the Macs you can't even segment it anymore. It's like impossible.

Speaker 3: 1:34:34

Yeah, I've never. I've admittedly have never used the Mac. I like, I like my Lenovo.

Speaker 1: 1:34:42

See, for me, I'm a creator. I'm a creator, so I like my. I love my Mac. I don't use it as much cause I got a gaming machine that I use for my lab and pretty much I do like a lot of work off there now cause it's more convenient, but I got like two desks like in my office. But anyways, that's kind of where it is on there. But let's talk about some of the non-technical things, or maybe some things that you discovered. When it comes to IR for Mizzix, have you been tasked with drawing up the IR report to send out to people?

Speaker 3: 1:35:14

I actually just got tasked with that for the first time last week to write a report. So that was new, and also I've been learning a lot about, like the legal aspects of things, because we are dealing with like client Well, so the way it works is like yes, our clients are the company that's been attacked, but technically, our clients are the attorneys that they're dealing with, like they're the ones that really source this. So a lot of like a lot of the times where a company wants to report like, for example, the case I'm working on now it's about to wrap up, actually- but, the case I'm working on now. they had wire fraud, like transfers that they didn't recognize through the bank, and this company is based in Mexico, so I'm not sure how it works in Mexico. But the bank was like oh, it was our fault, you know, don't worry about it. But they didn't tell them why and here is legally required to at least, but in Mexico maybe things are different. So what they wanted from our report was to basically have us say that hey, we didn't find anything malicious on our end. So we would really like for you Bank to follow up with what happened. And what I learned from that was like the legality of what the words you can use and say is very important, because we actually did find malicious activity, but it was from events that weren't related to this. So we had to write that in a report like we didn't find malicious activity as it relates to this case or as it relates to this incident, because if we said we didn't find malicious activity, legally we would get in trouble because we did, it just didn't relate to this case. So that's something. I mean it's kind of it's out of the box, but that's kind of the stuff that I've been learning that goes hand in hand with. This is like the legality of things too.

Speaker 1: 1:37:17

Okay, look at you. I'm gonna say that out of time because it's funny. It's like you just learning, but it's good that this was like your first experience. So what would you say to people who are find themselves in a position you were in maybe they are a junior or senior in college. What would you tell them right now about staying a course and trying to get into a position like yourselves?

Speaker 3: 1:37:42

I mean, I know you've already said it, but I just really wanna stress, like working on independent projects because, like I said, that's what I feel like I messed up in. I was way too focused on the fact that college was gonna teach me everything and it just didn't. It just didn't. It taught me, like, the definitions of things and the theory of things, but it did not teach me the hands on. So I was stressed, doing independent projects and also, if we're gonna talk just abstractly, to bed on yourself, because there are gonna be people that's gonna tell you there's gonna be doors shut time after time after time, and you're gonna find yourself comparing yourself to peers who seem to be getting it right and they're getting offers and they're getting internships, and you're gonna wonder, like, what it is that you're doing wrong. So that's what I would say just bed on yourself and really focus on doing independent projects. Like I said earlier, certifications are great, but companies really care about the hands on and if you're applying what you're learning. So that would be the advice I would give to the juniors and seniors out there.

Speaker 1: 1:38:55

So would you suggest that also people who are wanting to go into college should they do a little bit more in depth researching on the program that they'll be in?

Speaker 3: 1:39:07

Yes, definitely look at your curriculum, Like there should when you're picking your major. There should be like a full kind of like timeline of all the classes that you'll take and even the electives. So I would really do a deep dive into the major itself to make sure, like those are classes that you feel like you wanna take or that would help you in whatever your career goal is, even if you don't have it fully figured out. And also, don't just look at one major but look at others because you might wanna have a backup plan. The reality is college can be hard and life happens. I'll be honest, I had failed a class like three times and at one point I was gonna like get kicked out of the major because, like the school of, actually I did get kicked out of the major. The school of engineering does not play that. So I went from cybersecurity to information security is literally the exact same. It was just with different schools. It was a school of engineering was for cybersecurity and the school of arts and sciences was for information security. It was the exact same major. So I would do a deep dive on the different majors. Luckily, my school had a function where you could. They showed you related majors to the major that you were taking and also like related jobs in the field of the major that you were taking. So I would utilize all of that, have a backup plan and look at those classes to see if that's what you want. Because, like I said, I dropped out of international business just because of business calculus. Literally that alone was enough to make me drop out of the major. So do that ahead of time so you're not switching majors your junior year because then it might throw off your track of graduation. Luckily, when I switched majors from cybersecurity to information security, because the classes were essentially the same, I didn't lose. Like my graduation time didn't get pushed back. But if I had to switch completely different majors it would have. So do that ahead of time so you're not. You know you don't end up like a semester or two behind than what you were on track to be.

Speaker 1: 1:41:22

Right and I'll ask you this what's been like one of the bigger challenges you faced early on in your professional career that either you, like you found out, like you figured out how to get through it, or what that may be schooled and prepare you for kind of? Could you talk about that?

Speaker 3: 1:41:41

Yeah. So I would say the biggest challenge I'm facing now I think has more to do with, like my personality really, and I'm pretty sure there's people that could relate. But I'm kind of I can be like a recluse at times and I falsely believe because this is what the stereotype was that like IT you could be recluse, like you can just kind of just sit at your desk, you don't have to talk to any clients or you don't have to talk to anybody, and that is just not the case. So I had to kind of like get back on board of like the teamwork aspect of things had to get on your. Zoom. I had to get on my Zoom. I had to get on my Zoom. So that's the challenge that I'm kind of still facing. That's why I like to go in on Mondays, because that is the time that I get to be alone, but that's not always gonna be the case for people Like I'm lucky to have a hybrid job, but you might not. So that's the challenge is knowing your work environment. And also, I don't really have this problem. Like I'm pretty outspoken, like I keep it real, I say how I feel. But I would say a challenge for me would be knowing when to not keep it real. I guess, like the work environment can be very political and you're gonna be working with people who have been in the game for years probably longer than I've been alive and there's just certain things that just don't fly. So that would be something else that I'm working on too. Okay, yeah, I definitely. I know how I played a long game.

Speaker 1: 1:43:28

It's like me and my other coworker, like when we peep some, we'll talk about a more like me and my other coworker, like when we peep some we'll talk about amongst ourselves and we just say okay no tating that we playing the long game Cause sometimes, every time, everything undesirable. response then but, when it's time to respond. It's gonna be time to respond and that's what a lot of people don't know. Like I think I made a tick to talk with someone. It was like a questions about like corporate America and working and how to can you actually be yourself? And I was like truthfully kind of you can be, aspect to yourself and not your full self. Yeah, you just can't, cause if you could really be your full self, people will possibly like you or may not like you, cause you'll be able to talk to them how you want to or tell them exactly what you're not gonna do. Like there's a lot of stuff that comes with it. So you just gotta figure out how to bring the best representation of yourself to the company every day you're there. I think when people figure that out, that's when they'll be successful. And, like you said, people have the misconception that you can really just be in a room or dark with your hoodie on. That's typically more for and not really all the time for engineering roles, cause you still gonna have to address if you're working on a product or a project. You're gonna have to do your means, from time to time even your coding. So there is going to be some type of human interaction in your job. You just gotta figure out what amount works for you, like for me. I definitely could not do one of my jobs, reason why I live in so many meetings. I don't like talking to people for pointless meetings. I don't like being on camera for something that's pointless. I just I don't like this could have been an email. One day I'm going to wear the shirt, so when I'm on a camera and they say this could have been an email, so they get the picture, hey, this could have been an email.

Speaker 3: 1:45:03

Yeah, one of my oh, I can't I can't even describe him, cause then it'll give way too much information but one of my coworkers who's pretty high profile in the field well, he's not my coworker here, but someone that works at my company who's high profile in the fields stated that he refuses to turn his camera on in meetings because he doesn't want people to see the faces he make whenever they say something stupid. He can do that, cause he's a senior at this, but it's just funny that even someone who's been doing this and still doing it feels that way too.

Speaker 1: 1:45:36

He's like I definitely know I'll have to show you some off camera about that. Yeah, I like to use the avatar. A lot of times when I want to be on there, I use my avatar. I'm like, look, you're going to get this, this is the best thing you're going to get. But where can the listeners, where can they file you at and like on your social media? How can they find you?

Speaker 3: 1:45:56

Yeah, so my Twitter is at MKYAMakaya G-O-N-Z-A. I have my LinkedIn in the bio, but my LinkedIn is Makaya Gonzalez. It's just my name. Connect with me there. I'll connect back. But yeah, I really mainly just use Twitter. I'm not on LinkedIn that much I use Twitter. I do have an Instagram, but it's more so like personal. I don't talk tech on there at all. I don't do anything tech related on my Instagram. So if you want to connect on the business aspect of things, I recommend Twitter and LinkedIn.

Speaker 1: 1:46:30

You got anything you want to leave the listeners with.

Speaker 3: 1:46:33

Do I have anything to leave? The?

Speaker 1: 1:46:35

listeners with.

Speaker 3: 1:46:36

Yeah, make this a good 2024. Like you said, this is the first in-person for the year. Do I challenge you guys to do 10 new things this year that you've never done before? I feel like 2024 is the year for grow. I know they say this every year, but it's a leap year, so there's something special about this year.

Speaker 1: 1:46:58

That chick stepping on them steps.

Speaker 3: 1:47:00

Yeah, there's something special about this year. So any project that you've been holding off because you feel like it's not the right time it's never going to be your right time Do it now. Anything you've been wanting to let go, let it go. And if you needed to hear it, you're hearing it from me.

Speaker 1: 1:47:19

And I'm going to leave you all with this. If you do not read the rulebook, your head will be shaved. All right, man. It's been another episode of the Tech Show Toss. I'm your host HD. Y'all know what to do, man. Subscribe to the Patreon so you can support us doing great episodes like this. Also, like I said in my couple of other videos, if you want to do group coaching, I do have that link in the description as well where you can get group coaching access to me and my private Slack channel so I can help you all in your career. But I don't have to be too much hands on with you. But until next time we out Peace.