Over the last month, I worked with the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs (UCCS) Cybersecurity Apprenticeship program to create the first of many Career Bytes series.

The series I participated in was one focused on the Cybersecurity Analyst role and this article will cover the third and final episode in the series: Developing as an Analyst.

If you haven’t already, I’d highly recommend checking out my previous two articles that covered the first two episodes:

In the first episode, the moderator and I had a discussion about what it takes to be an analyst and in the second episode, we…

I recently had the privilege of participating in a fireside chat series for the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs Cybersecurity Apprenticeship program. Say that five times fast!

The series was broken down into three episodes:

1. Beginning as an analyst
2. Acing the analyst interview
3. Career growth as an analyst

Through these episodes, the goal was to provide insight into what it’s like to be a cybersecurity analyst, tips for obtaining an analyst position, and finally, what career growth for an analyst looks like.

Because this series was developed by UCC-CS and won’t be widely distributed outside of the university, I thought…

Today, I had the opportunity to talk to undergraduate Computer Science students about a Master’s degree in Cybersecurity. After talking a bit about how I got where I am today, someone asked me, “can you talk a bit about what you do from day to day in your role?”

Boy was that a loaded question! A great one, but nonetheless loaded.

I could’ve talked for hours about what I do in my role as a Security Engineer, but I only had a few minutes so I tried to keep it short. …

When I think back on my childhood, one of the things I always recall is never knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up. You all remember that question, right? You might’ve been in first grade, or maybe you were in fifth grade, but at some point, you were asked that question.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Whenever I was asked that I could never answer it, or at least not honestly. All the kids around me would answer with the typical responses: firefighter, vet, doctor, or teacher. There were some that got…

I’ve been going back and forth about writing about this. My family is a very private one, we’re not ones to share everything on social media. Half of my relatives aren’t on social media and some don’t even have smartphones.

But last night I was laying in bed and I decided, I think I’m ready to write about this.

Back in March, I published my first and only article with Invisible Illness: I’ve Never Experienced Loss, and I Feel Guilty About That.

For weeks after publishing it I wondered if I was tempting fate with my words. But at the…

Threat modeling is a topic that I think sometimes gets forgotten about. When I was studying for the CISSP, threat modeling was encompassed in Domain One, Security and Risk Management.

Back then I had pretty much zero security experience and I remember thinking, do people really use these models? I vividly remember writing down the definitions and frameworks for the popular threat models STRIDE, PASTA, DREAD, OCTAVE, and VAST and thinking, I’m never going to have to refer to these ever again.

Well, I was wrong. They surfaced again in my Secure Web App Design class that’s part of my…

CrowdStrike recently published a thought-provoking infographic titled, Exposing the Criminal Underground. Within it, they hit on a few key aspects of the current threat landscape:

• The rise of big game hunting
• Advancements in malicious As-A-Service offerings
• Various ways to monetize cyberattacks

In reading through it, I realized how important this information is, not only to understand how threat actors are operating but to understand how easy it is for anyone to attack your organization.

To preface the explanation of the three-piece cybercrime puzzle, let’s start with some of the things that are contributing to the current landscape.

Big Game Hunting

Big game hunting…

As you may know from reading some of my previous articles, I participated in a 30-day challenge for the month of June that involved drinking a gallon of water a day, exercising 30+ minutes six days a week, and doing 20 push-ups every day, among other things.

Prior to starting the challenge, I really thought the water consumption was going to be the most difficult part for me. I have always struggled to drink water, especially with the shift to working from home. …