In my first post I detailed the choices that led me from my original plan of being a history teacher, to dropping out of my computer science program, to starting my first help desk job. In my second post I mentioned how I climbed from my first help desk job, to working at Nortel, and the subsequent layoff that followed.

Unemployment sucked.

Nothing makes you feel as horrible as being layed off from a job. You end up blaming the company at first and then you turn the anger to yourself. At the time of my layoff, the job market in Ottawa was horrible so I had plenty of time to think all of this over as my house was being built. My soon-to-be wife and I lived with my parents for 3 months and her parents for 3 months as we gave up our apartment to save money during construction.

During this time I must have applied to at least 500 different jobs in various locations in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Australia. No one wanted me. The problem with being layed off by Nortel is that, typically, you’re not the only person. In fact I was one of a few thousand people layed off, all looking for the same (any) job.

While at my soon-to-be in law’s I received a call from a company who was contracted, by Nokia, to find some people to work front line firewall and network support. I jumped at the opportunity and within a week I was working as a contractor at Nokia. Since I had very little security experience there was a steep learning curve but Nokia provided exceptional training for both Nokia IPSO (the routing platform), Nokia IP Series appliances (their hardware), and Check Point VPN-1/Firewall-1 (the bundled firewall package).

While working at Nokia I made a point of learning everything I could about the products I supported. I also ensured that I obtained the certifications for the training I received in order to make myself stand out from the rest of my coworkers. Within 8 months, a record at the time I might add, I was hired full time by Nokia. Even thought I was hired into the job I made sure not to stop learning. I felt my routing and switching knowledge was weak so I paid, out of pocket, for a CCNA prep-course, and subsequent exam. Customers were calling in having problems with their Cisco to Check Point VPN’s, so I bought a books on Cisco PIX and Cisco VPN Concentrators and learned how to troubleshoot VPN related issues.

By this time I was hooked on security. At first I tried to read as much as I could on security topics to make me better at my job. The more I read the more I realized that I was genuinely interested in all facets of security, even those that didn’t relate directly to my current role. I started teaching a CompTIA Security+ prep-course, based on my own course content, through a local business to give back to the community. The funny thing was that most of my students were current Taima, now Convergys, employees looking to get ahead just as I had done.

I also started doing some consulting on the side for Cisco and Check Point issues. This helped me learn quite a bit about working with government organizations and subcontracting through other, larger consultancy firms. In 2004, after speaking with two friends at Nokia, we decided to form a business to help add credibility to our consultant engagements and help limit the taxes that could be taken from us. This is how Koteas Corporation was formed. Even though we didn’t, and still don’t, perform a large volume of work due to our full-time jobs, our customers have returned to us when they need help or advice.

At this time in my life I was looking for change. Nokia had become stagnant and there was little room for career advancement. Koteas Corporation didn’t have enough volume to support a full-time employee. I….was in a rut.

In February of 2005 I received a call from a recruiter in Fredericton, New Brunswick. A start-up called Q1 Labs was looking for a 3rd level support person to help support their network security management product, QRadar. They offered to fly me down for an interview to see if I was a fit for the organization. I spoke it over with my wife and I agreed to come down for an interview. The interview process was grueling. I was there for 8 hours and met with the heads of every department (Support, Engineering, and QA), the CTO, the CTA, and the VP of Engineering. I had never worked for a startup before but every person I talked to was so excited about the product and their jobs. This was quite a switch for me coming from such large multi-national corporations as Nortel and Nokia. I was instantly hooked and wanted to work there. After a couple of followup phone interviews with the COO and the CEO I received my package in the mail. My manager at Nokia was happy for me and understood why I wanted a change so we parted on very good terms and still keep in touch to this day.

When I arrived at Q1 I started working immediately. Not only was I supporting our customers but I was also supporting evaluation customers and our Sales Engineers in the field. I also had the opportunity to travel to customer sites to provide installation, configuration, and training services. During this time I wanted to make sure I kept learning so I invested in the SANS Intrusion Detection In-Depth self-study and the GCIA Incident Handling certification. This course was one of the best courses I’ve even taken and taught me so much about packet analysis and intrusion detection. While in support I also had the opportunity to go to a Building Scalable Cisco Internetworks class which taught me quite a bit about high level routing.

In 2006 I became the primary trainer for QRadar. I loved going from site to site providing the week long training course on our product. Also, because of my past experiences at Nokia and Koteas, I was able to relate sections of the course to customer needs and situations. At this time I also decided to pay for another SANS course. This time I took the Hacker Techniques, Exploits & Incident Handling course and subsequent GCIA Incident Handler certification (GCIH). Upon completion of my exam I received an email inviting me to join the SANS institute as a Stay Sharp trainer and Local Mentor for my area based on the score I achieved on the exam. I happily accepted!

In late 2006 I was rewarded with a promotion to lead a team of software developers whose main responsibility was integrating 3rd party event and vulnerability data into QRadar. Ironic isn’t it? The guy who dropped out of college because he didn’t like programming was now leading a team of software developers.

The story doesn’t end here as I am still happily working for Q1 Labs, still leading the same team (loving it!), still working on expanding Koteas, starting to be a technical reviewer for security related publications, starting to work more with the SANS institute, still studying and learning all I can, contributing back to the security community in forums and articles, blogging (of course you knew that already), starting to present at conferences, and starting to get my name recognized in the security industry. I hope you have enjoyed this three part series and if you have any questions/comments/concerns or just want to drop a note then please feel free to email me at andrewsmhay [at] gmail.com.

Thanks for reading!

In my first post I detailed the choices that led me from my original plan of being a history teacher, to dropping out of my computer science program, to starting my first help desk job.

After 2 years of working at Taima (now Convergys), I felt that I had hit a wall. The job no longer challenged me and became very monotonous. I decided to put my resume out there to see if anyone was looking for someone with my skill set. I learned very quickly that call center technicians are typically only hired for other call center jobs. Luckily Tonia, a good drinking buddy of mine, was working at Magma Communications, a then small ISP who was looking for people to work on their corporate support desk. I was called in for an interview which covered advanced networking, provisioning, and Linux/Unix administration. After stumbling and bumbling my way through the interview I never expected to get a call back. To my surprise I received the call 2hrs later and was offered the job. My new manager later told me that I did horrible on the interview but I had great people skills and that Tonia said I was lots of fun to go drinking with.

It was at Magma where I started learning Unix/Linux/Windows system administration. I will admit that it was quite a steep learning curve but I really enjoyed it. Three months into my new job I received a call from a recruiter who was looking for a platform analyst, which is a fancy term for technical support person, for a contract at Nortel Networks.

“Wow, Nortel!” was the only thought that went through my mind. At this point Nortel was still at it’s peak and hiring like mad. Layoffs were the furthest thing from everyones mind and there was nothing but prosperity on the horizon.

At the risk of burning bridges at Magma I accepted the contract at Nortel, with promise of an extension after the first 6 months. Upon arrival I realized that a ‘platform analyst’ role at Nortel related to resetting forgetful users custom application passwords. After about 2 months I realized that working at Nortel may not have been the best career move. To sum it up:
The Positives:

• More money than I had ever made before
• Met my future wife
• Got engaged to aforementioned wife

The Negatives

• Lost quite a bit of my technical skills due to monotonous, repetitive work

As with most people with Nortel on their resume, the axe finally swung on my job 3 days shy of being there a full year. The Friday prior to the layoff I was assured by both my manager and the HR representative that I had nothing to worry about and that my job wasn’t going anywhere. Needless to say I was devastated that Monday morning when the same management tag-team told me that everything they had told me on Friday had been “recalculated due to business requirements”. “Recalculated” being the politically correct term for “bold faced lie” in this case.

So here I was…unemployed, living at my soon to be in-laws house waiting to take ownership of my newly purchased house (Oh did I forget to mention that little gem?), and not knowing what my next steps were.

Check back shortly for my next posting which details my post-Nortel career workshop experience, the job that launched my security career, and the co-founding of Koteas Corporation.

My post about Mike Murray’s Building a Sustainable Security Career article made me think about the question that gets asked to every security professional at some time during their career – “How did you get to where you are?”

Everyone follows a different path but some of our journey’s start out quite differently. In this 3 part series I’ll attempt to explain how I went from a average High School student, with aspirations of being a history teacher, to the leader of a team of security-oriented software developers for a successful startup.

Part 1 – The Choice

In grade 11 I was positive that my career path was going to take me to University to study to become a history teacher. I loved history and social sciences and figured teaching it would be a great way to spend the rest of my life. At the same time, Nortel Networks was booming and hiring people straight out of University and College with degrees/diplomas in Computer Science. I decided that computers was probably a more realistic career path and switched high schools to one that offered a semester based system.

After graduating high school I enrolled at Algonquin College in the Computer Engineering Technology – Computing Science program. After struggling through the first year and a half I decided that the idea of sitting behind a desk, programming into the night, was not the path I wanted to follow. I switched to the Computer Systems Technician program as it appeared, on the surface, to be more networking oriented. Under the covers it was still very much programming oriented so I only made it through half of the term before withdrawing from Algonquin College. In hindsight I think that there were multiple reasons that I didn’t succeed at college:

1. I had just turned 18, which was the legal drinking age in Quebec (a short drive from Ottawa which had a drinking age of 19)
2. I was too young to understand the focus and dedication required for ‘higher’ education
3. I let the promise of money dictate where I should focus my studies

After making, what my parents then referred to as, “the biggest mistake of my life” I started looking for a job in the real world. I hooked up with a computer wholesaler as your typically sales guy. “Hi, I know you purchased two computers 5 years ago but we have a great deal on hard drives if you buy 200 of them…..hello?” After about 4 weeks I that this was not the career for me. I was offered a job at Taima Corporation (now Convergys), a fast paced call center supporting ISPs from all over North America. The catch? I had to attend one month of unpaid training which covered basic operating system configuration, dial up networking technology, and troubleshooting. The money was twice that of working at the local fast food joint so I figure “why not, I’m still living at home for free”. The training was surprisingly good as Taima wanted to make sure that when you were thrown on the phones you knew what you were talking about. The made sure everyone had a firm understanding of:

• Windows 3.1,95,98,NT
• MS-Dos
• MacOS 7.51-X, AppleTalk
• BootP, DOCSIS Standards
• Cable Modem Technology and Structure
• Network Architecture, Design, Connectivity
• UNIX
• ATM, Frame Relay, ISDN, xDSL
• Citrix

Most people trash call center jobs but I think it’s a great place for people to start out. You don’t start as a General in the military…you start on the front lines.

Check back shortly for my next posting which details my move from my first call center job, to my next call center job, to my ‘dream job’ at Nortel Networks.