hey friends welcome back so today I thought we would do a sit down have some coffee and have a
real candid conversation around Cloud security my journey into Cloud security and of course becoming
an MVP so basically I think one thing to note and one thing that should be clarified up front
is that before getting into Cloud security I have had extensive years of experience working in cyber
security or information security pretty much after some euros going through multiple different roles
in security this has led me to where I am now which is the cloud security space for many of
you watching this you're probably looking to start your cyber security Journey or looking to elevate
or move into cyber security and Cloud security is a an option that you're considering kind of
in the beginning stages of your career and that is totally fine there are multiple roles available in
Cloud security from engineering analysis testing application security devsec apps even thread Intel
working in the sock specifically focused on cloud computing Technologies compliance
governance awareness you get it there's a lot of opportunity in cloud computing and Cloud security
for beginner level roles and then of course for the more senior and advanced type roles
first off to mention is that my role is a cloud security architect so in the architecture space
the requirement is all ready to have a lot more knowledge about Cloud security Computing systems
and have some background and experience basically of what it takes to kind of keep things safe
optimize things and design secure infrastructure systems and secure infrastructure applications
and in my case secure Cloud environments Now what is my background so first off my formal education
was based in it ugh what is back then called an IT degree probably systems engineering and
systems design and so with that I specialized in to networking so networking was kind of the
one of the very first things that I did and my first job was a failed support engineer where
I would go and install different computers at people's homes small companies and I would have
to connect this up to router and connect that up to the Internet and then make sure that they can
send and receive emails and all these things so it was very um admin focused and that gave me the
ability to understand really integrately how the Windows operating system works how the servers
Oasis work and how Network infrastructure works and how things connect together to then connect
to the internet so fast forward from there the first actual security role that I went into was
a network security and endpoint security role so this is fixing antivirus on computers configuring
firewalls so that different servers can communicate with each other over a network really
in-depth knowledge about Network ports protocols how things flow and this is really where Linux
got introduced into my journey because it is about understanding how to support or do configuration
on command line interfaces and for most of these systems and firewalls and routers the command
line interface is based on a Linux under a laying operating system fast forward from there it went
further on into kind of a more senior network security architecture and installation space
and from there is really where I initially dipped my toes into the water of architecture because
it was about understanding basically what type of firewall you would install for a company if
they had a certain amount of assets and they had certain amount of business requirements and they
needed to communicate with different customers etc etc and they needed to do this securely so
the objective for me at that stage was really to understand kind of what they needed in order to
facilitate this connectivity securely throughout my journey I did a bunch of certifications now
I have done a lot of certifications and usually you can see those on my LinkedIn page so I will
not go into the details of all of the endpoint security and network security and all of the
certifications that I did but I will say these are some of the big hitters early on in my career that
really made a difference for me so the first one was Security Plus and it's worth mentioning that
I only did Security Plus when I was already in the workplace so when I was already a network
security engineer that's when I actually did Security Plus and then prior to doing Security
Plus though I actually did start with the a plus and N plus so the a plus and N plus were the two
certifications that was able to get me into the space of going into the sys admin field support
engineering role and then I only did Security Plus when I was actually on in the workplace I did a
bunch of things koalas vulnerability scanning certifications McAfee checkpoint fine ruling
certifications at that point I was on a trajectory to become a checkpoint specialist as in the ccsa
ccse then I started realizing that I might want to play into a different trajectory and that would
be into actual architecture and business design spaces and for this really this is where I then
worked on advancing my career and when I say worked on advancing my career I mean this is
where I really waned and I had the ambition to get the cissp now the cissb I have a whole video
on it so I won't go into too much detail here but it definitely was a game changer for my career as
soon as I obtained the cissp certification it is such a highly valued certification in Industry it
was just immediately recognized by employers and I got multiple different job offers and recruiters
reached out to me on LinkedIn and it was just like I was flooded with opportunities for work in cyber
security and so the next tip for me was to go into more of the financial services space I took a job
at a very very large Bank which was significant for me because the threats and incidents and risks
that you see that a bank is faced with is just it's huge from a cyber security perspective like
I didn't even miss the thought or have the thought of would my career be better off if I worked in a
large technology Services organization or a large vendor because the banking environment for my
cyber security career just taught me so so much and the opportunities within Financial Services
were just massive so I got the opportunity to work inside of throat intelligence which some of you
may know is one of my most favorite domains and in the sock and I bought out threat Intel strategies
that integrates with sock systems and it was such a challenging and fun experience for me and a
massive learning curve thereafter I delved into a little bit more of the management components
I was in the cyber security awareness space and then I did some of the governance work and
quickly established that I am probably more of a technology professional and Hands-On professional
and I'm really not a governance person I I mean huge respect to people who do the governance work
because it really is massive and it's like you have to continue to Define certain things assess
certain things like know your knowledge area of and the governance principles whether it's nist
whether it's PCI whether it's assist you know you you just have to know all of these different
controls that has to be implemented and enforced across the IIT landscape and then you have to kind
of get technical people to do it so heads off to all the governance people so at this point I had
had a lot of experience in Security in multiple places and I'm so grateful for the opportunities
that came my way but that I selected for myself really and the passion continued and the drive
continued and I got certified in the domains but I was working in trading towel I even did
a paint testing certification so I think one of the biggest learnings for me throughout the
journey was that you can never stop learning you can never stop and let your guard down you always
have to make sure that you're gaining the right credential that's applicable at that stage it's
not about accumulating a ton of certifications or many credentials that you can't validate the
knowledge for it's really about getting the credential that's applicable at that stage in
your career and then we move to the opportunity for cloud so after the financial services I went
to another Insurance firm which I guess is also sole financial services but there I was looking
after more of the rate team security components Lee eating the sock there I was doing the security
strategy work it was a big role for me at the time and I worked directly with the CSO and I
learned so much and at that stage was really my first exposure to cloud and specifically Azure
that's where what we were using at the time and it was really no one really knew what was going on
we had some workloads going into Azure which the developers had put in there but from a security
perspective nobody really knew what was going on and this was the perfect opportunity for me to
upskill myself but I didn't have a long time to upskill myself within that organization because
then I was approached by Microsoft and that's when I took the opportunity to go and work as a
cloud security architect at Microsoft now I think the Microsoft story is one probably for a unique
video on its own but to such on some of the things it was a huge leap for my career I had to take
so many Azure certifications training and courses I was already coming in at quite a fairly senior
role and I was having to advise customers on cloud security but here's the thing even
though I was not an expert at that stage in Cloud security I had the right amount of knowledge in
cyber security for customers to trust and value my opinion Cloud security is just an addition right
it's it's a different configuration landscape and yes you need a different understanding in order
to operate in the cloud you really need to evolve your thought process you need to evolve the core
NATO components remain the same but essentially the network is no longer the perimeter it's like
the identity takes over as the perimeter and yeah I feel like I'm going into rambling territory here
so basically I think key takeout again here is even if you don't feel ready for the next role
or if you feel like it might be over your head and too far ahead take the opportunity take the
massive leaps that you can get in your career because that is what will allow you to grow and
get to the level where you need to be faster if I didn't have the challenge of getting to that
level where I needed to be and I didn't take the job because I was afraid then I wouldn't
have gotten that quickly accelerated into Cloud security alright fast forward to now I was then
approached by an international organization and the offer was to come and lead the cloud
security practice basically within this massive massive Global organization and it was abroad
and so I moved and that's really where I am now and fast forward to today I have multiple Azure
certifications I am a an expert level certified Cloud security architect and Microsoft BP and I
have a massive platform where I aim to share my knowledge and educate as many people as I can but
firstly the opportunity in Cloud Security in cyber security and the fact that you don't have to be
the smartest person to work in cyber security you just have to have to drive passion and ambition
to continue learning and honestly the Journey of sharing this information with all of you has
really completely changed my life because it has allowed me to firstly build a community understand
the value of sharing information and also to have to learn much more if I want to be a thought
leader in the space of cloud and cyber security to share my knowledge with all of you then I have to
continue learning evolving and growing and that is something that I wouldn't change for anything so
at this point I hope you enjoyed my story about my journey let me know what other questions you
have for me regarding with regards to my journey or what you want me to talk about in terms of
any of the roles or any of the experience that I have subscribed if you're new and thank you very
much for being part of this community for engaging with my videos and my content and for appreciating
and letting me share my story and my journey in cyber security catch you next time bye [Music]