Mid-career Traisition to Infosec #0x05

Progress Report.

Over the last couple of months, I've been going through the Offensive Security Labs and HackTheBox, and I think I'm doing pretty ok. I don't have too much trouble with the easy and medium ones. Of course, there are those exceptions where a box is marked as easy, and you just have no idea how to approach it, but again, these are exceptions. So, I finally got the courage to schedule the OSCP exam. The exam is scheduled now for March 11th. I was trying to book it as soon as possible, but there were no free slots for the weekends, which was a prerequisite for me. That's ok, there are still plenty of boxes I can go through on HTB or OffSec labs to practice, but I've super excited and can't wait for the challenge day!

There's one more thing I wanted to mention, in the context of the transition to infosec. I've recently had an opportunity to meet and chat with Ted Harrington (the guy who wrote Hackable), and he suggested something important. He said that the moment I'm sure about what I want to do, I should go out and start talking about it publicly, let people know what I'm up to and how much I want it. I started writing this blog series almost a year ago but never published it, I was waiting for the transition to be complete. Ted is the one who encouraged me to make it public immediately. He said that this way I'm letting people know that I'm serious about it and am open to new opportunities. I was skeptical about it at first, after all, I wasn't feeling strong enough to start applying for new opportunities, but I did it. I also started showing my interest on LinkedIn a little bit more, posting some posts about my tools and whatnot. I immediately noticed the interest of people, which I wouldn't even think of in this context, which was quite encouraging to stay on track and keep pushing through my upskill plan. A couple of months after when I started being more active, I suddenly started getting some job offers in infosec! Unfortunately, all of them were more on the defensive side, and since I'm interested in offensive security, I did take up any of them. But just the fact that a guy like me, with no real-world experience in the sector, is getting infosec job offers - I was shocked but it also encouraged me even more to continue. There's a shortage of infosec talent out there, but for people like me, it's good news.

Ted's advice was so simple but so powerful that I have to pass it on. If you also try to get to infosec, don't wait for your story to be successful. Go out with anything you've got now, and build upon it. Tell people what you're up to and how you plan to achieve it. There's a high chance that someone who reads it will either get inspired by what you do or even decide to help you in achieving your goal.