I had been planning to post about a legal argument made regarding employer’s email systems and employee rights, but I’ll save that until the weekend…this sounds more fun right now any way!
I’ve been participating in the Security Catalyst site for the past few months.
It’s a great, informative and valuable place for getting to know others in the information security profession who are at all levels of their careers.
Ron Woerner, one of the founders, challenged me and others in the Security Analyst community,
Gary Hinson,
Didier Stevens,
Gretchen Rubin, and
Kent Blumberg,
to tell how we got our start in information security.
Oh, boy…where to begin…the path to today came about through accidents, luck, following my bliss, good decisions, bad decisions, positive thinking through completely horrible times, and the opportunity to learn and grow through every good and bad turn.
Let’s see…sometimes it helps to look back to the beginning and map out correlations the the road of life.
Birth to now (yes, bear with me): I’ve had pets (dogs, cats, reptiles, amphibians, insects, you name it.) Born with love of animals.
2nd grade: My dad, a high school math teacher at the time, would give me his students’ math problems to do while he graded papers on the kitchen table. Seeds planted for love of math, learning, and critical thinking.
5th – 6th grade: I wrote plays and skits for my school for grades 5 all the way through 12 that they performed for the parents/public. I also created and wrote a little school paper for a few years. Seeds planted for love of writing.
5th grade to now: Played musical instruments (flute, piccolo, alto sax), did a lot of art, and participated in sports (basketball and running). Love of music, sports and art.
Sr. year of high school: I had wanted to be a veterinarian for several years. But as graduation approached, being very young and naive, I thought that being in school for 7 years would take too long. Other options included going into math, music, art, sports or writing. Since I wanted to be able to always be self supporting, I chose math and decided it would be interesting to throw in a double major with computer science.
Upon graduation I worked very briefly at AT&T in Kansas City. I went in to be a COBOL programmer, but they soon wanted to transfer me to New Jersey. Nothing against folks in New Jersey, but I was born and raised in Missouri and have always lived in the midwest; the thought (of a still young and naive me) of moving far away from my family to a place I had never been and knew no one was out of the question.
So my father, who had become a superintendent of schools when I was in 5th grade, suggested I teach; so I spent a couple of years teaching 7th – 12th grade math and computers…at the same school where my dad was superintendent and where I went to school, which was a quite a learning experience in many different ways!
I then spent another very, very brief time selling Apple/Mac computers. I quickly learned I am not cut out to be a full-time cold-calling sales person…I hated it!
So then I got my Master’s degree in Computer Science and Education…
I went to work as a system’s analyst creating CICS regions and doing various types of system’s programming at Principal Financial Group (PFG) in Des Moines, Iowa. . During this time my husband and I also bought a farm close to Des Moines in Madison County, so I got to also work outdoors and with animals. It was a great balance of technology, physical labor, and working with nature and animals. They all contribute to each other in many different ways.
After doing programming for around 1 1/2 years I had the opportunity to go into the IT Auditing area…and then as a result of an audit I did to determine how good information security within the company I got to help build the Information Protection function within a newly formed Risk Controls and Management program. While there I did many different compliance, information security and privacy activities, from the very technical to the very legal to the very artistic and creative for the awareness and training activities.
While at PFG I started writing articles for the Computer Security Institute and Auerbach.
After several years I then had the opportunity to join a pre-IPO (yes, I hear collective sighs of understanding out there, along with a few shrieks) consulting company which appealed to me very much since it gave me an opportunity to learn about many different industries of many different sizes throughout the world. I wrote, actually was the editor for with several of the sections I wrote, my first book, The Privacy Papers, in 2000, and it was published by Auerbach in 2001.
I worked within 3-5 consulting companies (depending on if you count the acquisitions separately or not) for 4 years. During that time I continued to do more writing, you can see more about that on my personal web site more in-depth information security, privacy and compliance work; continued to run and exercise as a very needed way to think about the topics I was working on in a different way than can be done otherwise, along with staying healthy. Unfortunately I stopped playing my instruments…just didn’t have the time with everything else along with having two small sons and juggling the farm business. But, my collection of tunes is straining the seams of my 30GB iPod.
After the last consultancy I worked for went under, I decided to go out on my own…and I love it! The last three years I’ve been more busy, met more people, and learned more than I ever imagined. It would be very hard to go back to working for an employer. I’m so thankful that I have the abilility to work on projects I love, have my own home office (the commute is great and I can spend a lot of time with my family), and I continue to meet the most amazing and interesting people. And, I’m still in farming and have pets I take care of.
So, upon looking back, I never would have even known about the type of work I do now when I was a child or in my teens thinking about what I wanted to do for a career; but somehow allowing myself to go with the flow and make the best of bad situations has, to this point, landed me with my own business and work I love doing. In many ways I have come full circle with many of the activities I enjoyed doing so much as a little girl.
Thank you, Ron, for the intriguing challenge! Nice to get to know another mid-westerner in cyberspace…and you’re virtually my I-80 neighbor! 🙂
Okay…now I will pass the challenge torch on to the following people to write a blog post on how they got to where they are today. I’m picking you because I have enjoyed reading your postings, and I want to learn more about you.
* LonerVamp: http:/www.terminal23.net
* Lori MacVittie: http://devcentral.fs.com/weblogs/macvittie
* Ken Camp: http://ipadventures.com/
Tags: awareness and training, career, Information Security, information security profession, IT compliance, privacy