Travel Adventures

I saw this post from Jacob titled Beware tech career advice from old heads and I think it’s spot on. Infosec, even back when I was first getting into the field in 2010-ish, has always had that seemingly artificial barrier-to-entry, but there was A LOT that was different then and just doesn’t apply today. The technical/experience expectation(s) for newcomers has skyrocketed, the competition for jobs has ballooned by several orders of magnitude it seems, opportunities have stagnated to a degree, and the advent of AI has started to put pressure on these sorts of technical roles.

When I was getting into the field the recommendation was basically, “get a certification or two, starting with the Security+—and ideally, have a degree in computer science”. That was it. Nowadays the expectations are through the roof, and you’re competing with others who are building incredible resumes before even landing their first job. Open source contributions, participating in capture the flag competitions, bug bounty hunting, multiple certifications, advanced degrees—all to just qualify and compete with other similar portfolios for an entry-level gig.

I do have advice (e.g. my playbook and clout-boosting tips, among other things), and I do share it quite often, but if you’re new to the field and trying to break in, it’s worth asking yourself how valuable that advice really is. After all, it’s been a while since I’ve had to “break in” myself…

Good luck on the hunt!

On May 30, 2019 I published the very first post to shellsharks.com, “Getting Into Information Security”. When I first started the blog I didn’t have a particularly clear idea of what I wanted to do with it, but I had the idea to write that piece and one other idea which which was to catalog all named vulnerabilities. Beyond that, I just wrote about whatever came to mind. It’s been 5 years to the day since I got that first piece out and not only has the site come a long way, but so have I.

In the beginning, I think my main focus was to keep the site mostly infosec-related in terms of my writing, but even back then I left the door open to write about other things. Afterall, the tagline for my site has always been “Infosec, Technology, Life”. The first 4 years of the site did end up skewing mostly Infosec / Tech but since discovering the IndieWeb last year, I have made a noticeable shift towards writing more about “Life”, i.e. anything non-tech / non-infosec, and it’s been a lot of fun!

The site has also gone through a number of big aesthetic overhauls and architectural redesigns. There will always be new things I want to add to the site or ways in which I wish I could rearchitect it even further, but for now, I am quite happy with the latest generation of its look-and-feel as well as the functionality itself.

I’ve not maintained the same level of active-ness throughout the last 5 years, but in more recent history I’m quite pleased with the amount of attention I’ve given it, the upgrades I’ve made, and the writing I’ve produced, and I am certainly starting the next 5 years quite strong. I plan to continue to funnel my professional work, technological side quests and life experiences into what I write about.

I really want to thank everyone who has read anything I’ve written, those who have offered kind words over social media or elsewhere, those who have given me meaningful/constructive feedback and anyone who has taken the time to subscribe, like or engage with me or my writing. Like many who start a blog, I had no expectation of building a readership. I started it with the intention of sharing my oft-repeated guidance on getting into the infosec field and as a place to write resources for myself. Over time though I have found that sure enough, there are people out there who enjoy, or get value out of what I have documented or what I have to say and it is undoubtedly a good feeling.

These days, I spend as much if not more effort writing about and encouraging others to start a site and be themselves as I do writing about tech/infosec. My experience with shellsharks has taught me more about what it means to be authentic on the web than it has helped me with my various infosec-related research things. I’m still a cybersecurity professional and as such will continue to make that a focus of what I learn and thus what I write about, but it is clear to me that I’ve developed a passion for IndieWeb advocacy and I hope to continue to inspire others both in my field and abroad to start their own journey in the personal web.

Thanks for reading. Here’s to the next 5 years!

Fun Fact: December 4, 2020 | The earliest snapshot I could get of shellsharks on archive.org