why are -you- into the security field?

[guardian alpha]

We are each here for our own reasons. Each of us has a slightly different story of why we are working the boxen and strengthening the networks. Different things drive different people into network/computer security. From curiosity to enjoyment, 9-5 job or money; there is a drive to be found in each of us. I'm hoping you all will share your reasons and drives behind your involvement in security, and that it may be an influence to the newer members of AO both now and in the future. To know and understand that someone in the security field may be seeing things eye-level with you always makes things a bit more bearable during those tough days.

My story is not focused on curiosity or money, enjoyment or required for a job. I am in network and computer security soley for the ability to protect and inform others that cannot protect themeselves. Recommendations for proper spyware/adware removal, in-depth programming explainations to provide insight on secure code for buisnesses, firewall importance and explaination of it's use for adults to protect their children's information from crackers and script kids. My advice and insight may go to a CEO that just wants to know how he can best prevent possible break-ins from his competition, or to a father who wants to make sure his tax records are not caught up in spyware and sent out across the web, and it may even go to the young teenager who wants a quick-grin of taking out a webserver that... may just have a saving chance if I could sit down and explain the dangers and reasons behind the actions he would want to commit. My story is about informing and protecting others in a field that many of them find too complex and intimidating to protect themselves against, much less have the time to research.

What is your story?

[Tiger Shark]

Guardian:

You're doing this security thing wrong....

My advice and insight may go to....... or to a father who wants to make sure his tax records are caught up in spyware and sent out across the web

ROFLMAO

Joke.....

[©opy®ight]

I'm just a script kiddie hoping one of these 1337 hax0rs will post something in the Addicts forum on how i can hack boxes .

[guardian alpha]

Well, the point would be to (in that example) explain why such things would not be possible.

I'm not trying just to teach technical aspects of how programs work, but to disband FUD and debunk myths. Far too many people don't understand the majority of internet based culture, and even more have a few myths of the way "things work" according to their FWD:FWD:FWD:FWD:FWD: email from their uncle.

[MrLinus]

Well, I first got interested when I was DoS'd after banning someone out of an IRC channel (many moons ago). The curiosity remained somewhat dormant until I began looking into network administration and discovered a book by Stephen Northcutt, Network Intrusion Detection: An Analyst's Handbook. I was in awe and intrigued about how much you can learn about a network and security by using something as simple as tcpdump. Around the same time I found AO and the school I was an admin at was introducing a security course. This meant I had to develop the necessary lab so the students could do the work they needed to do as well as learn some of the "toys".

After being an admin for a few years, it was suggested I get into teaching. I decided I wanted to specialize in security because it was just so cool (or so it seems to me). Every time I teach something or learn something that I can in turn pass on to students or friends in IT I feel like I've been part of an exploration or adventure.

[schmit]

I more or less fell into the security field after I got out of the Marine Corps. I was picked up by a contracting company that handled DoD network security (primarily for the Navy and Marine Corps). Once I was in, I was fascinated (and still am) at all of the neat stuff that could possibly go wrong with a network and what I could do to prevent it from going wrong.

[whatthe]

I'm not in the security field per se, mostly pc and app support, but I think that everyone involved in IT has the obligation to learn as much as they can about security. It has the potential to affect everyone's job in the entire field and it's just to important an area to stick your head in the sand and leave it up to someone else. Murphy's law is that when the shite hits the fan, you'll be the one at work not the 'someone else'

Freakin' Murphy.

[XTC46]

Ive always been intrested in computers. So naturally I started messing with them, I then got into a destructive phase and wanted to be a "1337 hacker" and downloaded TONS of skiddie tools and did the whole break in and destroy thing for a little bit, but then it got boring becasue destroying stuff on someone elses box really does you know good, so i started trying to fix the stuff I could break. Eventually I just liked the challenge of beating the crackers at their own game and now here i am at age 19 and learning as much as possible to boost my own ego when I watch people get denied left and right trying to get into our networks.. lol the money aint bad either but my job sure as hell isnt 9-5. lol.

[Egaladeist]

I have no idea why I'm here I'm the anomaly !

[xierox]

I'm here because I love working with computers. Security has intrigued me ever since I learned about Spyware and first ran Ad-Aware.

- Xierox