Razorthorn Vlog Series – Coming Soon!

Razorthorn Vlog Series: The Truth About Being an Information Security Professional

We’re excited to announce that over the coming months, Razorthorn will be running a series of video blogs that will give you the hard-learned secrets to being successful in this industry, the skills you need (and those you don’t) and I’ll talk about the life of an information security professional and the paths you can take to success.

It’s not a traditional course, there will be no exams, but I will be covering as much material as I can on a regular basis in order to assist you in becoming the best information security professional you can be.

I will let you in on the things you don’t find out from a text book, things that I’ve learned throughout my career that I wish I had known when I was starting out.

This is a collaborative effort – drop me a line with any burning questions and I’ll give you the answers and cover the areas you ask me to.

Email us quoting “The Truth About Being an Information Security Professional” and we will alert you when a new vlog is released.

Who is this vlog series for?

This training vlog series is for those in the early to mid-stages of their infosec career, and it will also be helpful to those considering beginning a career in this industry.

Maybe you have been in the infosec industry for a while and are interested in other ideas, other ways of practicing your craft, maybe you are looking for guidance on areas that you have yet to touch on or have had a stall in your career and are looking to get back on track – the reason really doesn’t matter, what matters is that you are looking to improve yourselves and are attempting to be the best you can be.

I have been in this game for a long time and I have had a lot of excellent mentors that have taught me a great deal – it’s time to pass that on to a new generation of information security people.

This vlog is for everyone, no matter if you’re here to learn what infosec is or you are planning a career and need to know where to start.

So, what can I teach you?

I have been in information security a long time, since well before it became a popular career choice and way before information security or cyber security was important. Back when I first got into information security you were lucky if the company you worked for had antivirus… or even a firewall. Yes, things have moved on extensively since I was a bright-eyed newbie in this field, the world is a lot more complex today than it was 20 years ago.

Today, information security and cyber security is widely regarded as a necessary business requirement, CISOs are commonplace and ever increasingly are either board members or advisors to the board leadership. In a vast majority of cases, we are also no longer extensions of the IT department, we are either a department of our own or we are part of compliance or legal departments, occasionally the finance department.

The light is shining bright for those individuals following an information security career, and to be honest, with everything going on in the world, that light is going to get a hell of a lot brighter than it is even today. But we are facing a significant challenge, one that is proving to be extremely difficult to overcome.

We don’t have enough well rounded, qualified and dedicated security professionals.

There – I’ve said it, though I’m not the first and won’t be the last. The lack of qualified information security and/or cyber security professionals in this industry is causing a serious concern for us top-end career infosec people. It’s extremely hard these days to get good, qualified people onto your team because there are not enough of them, and the ones that are good are often quickly poached and move on because the wages for a security person even midway through their career is extremely attractive.

There is also a flood of people trying desperately to get into the field, seeing the high wage potential, there have been a fair few people changing career, making out they have been in the industry for a long time in order to get the high salary. Unfortunately for them, they usually quickly get found out and moved on, leaving the next information security professional to mop up their mess.

Become the best

What this industry desperately needs is good quality, well trained, upcoming information security professionals who are being mentored by experienced information security professionals for at least the first five years of their career. They need to understand both information security as well as cyber security and the differences between them. They need to know what a good security policy looks like, how a pen test works and to interpret the results, when a security tool is beneficial and when it’s not. Being a good quality information security professional is not all about cool security tools and the power to say no.

There is a lot to being an information security professional that much of the available material online does not mention, a lot of concepts that you tend to only learn in the field when you have a good mentor, such as it being beneficial to know at least a basic level of psychology, a basic level of law for your area, concepts such as Schrodinger’s Cat and Occam’s razor. There are a lot of skills you need to consider in a journey to becoming an information/cyber security professional.

Get involved

If you want to learn from me, your online mentor, join our mailing list today and find out when the vlog goes live. Equally if there are any burning topics you want me to cover then please send us an email and I’ll work it into the vlog series.

Email us quoting “The Truth About Being an Information Security Professional” and we will add you to the mailing list.