Found a mentor: Jimmy Vo!

I’ve posted before about chatting on #misec IRC and how it’s a great group of people. Well now it’s also the place where I’ve found my first infosec mentor! Jimmy Vo is a security researcher at rapid7 and is teaching me the basics of information security.

We are meeting online at least every other week and talking about a large range of things from current security events, best practices, and tool walk throughs (like metasploit), as well as career prep and how to survive in this industry. So far I’ve been having a blast. Jimmy has helped me harden the server that hosts this site, which is great because before that I didn’t even know people were brute forcing my SSH port. I’ve also looked into setting up my kali box so I can SSH into it from anywhere, so I don’t have to carry around multiple computers but I still get access to all the tools and toys of kali.

My hopes for this mentorship are pretty similar to my hopes of getting into the industry. I want to learn as much as possible and do whatever I can. Jimmy is helping me narrow that down to something along the lines of Application Security, keeping up and responding to current events in the security industry, and getting ready for a long career and how to make the best of it.

Sounds like a lot of fun right? A one on one session to learn all the cool things about infosec? Well pretty much anyone can get a mentor because there are a lot of willing people to do it. I suggest you talk around the IRC channels and find someone you like, once you’re in contact ask them to be a mentor. Even if they say no, I’m sure they’ll point you in the direction of someone who could help you out.

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