Networking your security career — It ain’t all about that TLS

Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer

I’m extremely happy to be starting off the year by continuing my series of humble posts aimed at helping people at the early stages of their career in security. I decided to start this year by focusing on the part of the security industry that I love the most — the community. There are SO MANY amazing people who contribute their undoubtably limited time and seemingly boundless energy to create opportunities for people in the industry to network. My only advice to you is to make the most of it! And perhaps a small proportion of those reading this, will become one of those amazing people I admire so much.

So how do you take advantage of this amazing community? Well you network the hell out of it! Hopefully this post will give you some practical steps to help you make the most of your networking attempts.

Maintain your existing network

This should be pretty obvious, but we all have existing networks that we shouldn’t forget about. Amongst your extended family, your school friends and college professors,will be someone that will be able and willing to help you in your career at some point, so make the effort to maintain those networks. This is an important lesson for all your networks — if you don’t make the effort to keep in contact and stay a valuable part of their network, they won’t be a valuable part of your network when you need it.

Expand who and what you follow

Whether you are on LinkedIn or on Twitter, there are a huge number of security influencers, organizations and leaders who share amazing content on a daily basis and also encourage engagement from across the industry. There is so much you can learn by just listening and asking questions.

The real trick is to be a little more strategic in your intent by identifying a list of relationships you’d like to forge and what you hope to gain from each relationship. My advice is not to be limited to only security leaders, but think broader. You will be surprised by the size of the community when you realize that venture capitalists, recruiters, researchers, risk management experts etc are all a part of it. More importantly, they can bring real tangible value to your network — as it’s not only technical security skills and knowledge that you’re wanting to leverage.

Find that mentor or find many a mentor

At this point, you should ask yourself whether any of these contacts would be beneficial as a mentor. A mentor can provide you with career guidance, industry insights and relevant knowledge to sharpen your skills and further develop your career. I’ve had several mentors through my career and still have. These are people I value and trust, who I’m never afraid of asking for advice.

Find one. Find many. You won’t regret it.

Meetup at a meetup

There is no doubt about it — Meetups (including conferences) are a great way to get together with fellow security professionals (at every stage of their careers), grow your technical knowledge and garner first-hand insights into the industry. It may even open doors to a job opportunity.

As always, be strategic in your choice of Meetups as well as who you connect with and how. Remember that one of the objectives of the Meetup is to grow your network, so I encourage you to talk to as many people as possible. Take an interest in their story and share your own and definitely exchange contact details. This is what LinkedIn was designed to facilitate, so don’t be afraid to reach out to connect.

Take it up a notch by participating

By now, you should have a pretty solid network of people that you’ve worked on creating and connecting — the real magic is to flip that around and get others to work at adding you to their network.

The best way I’ve found to do that is to participate. You could do this in several ways including contributing to an open source project, developing and presenting your first talk at a Meetup or conference and volunteering at something that benefits the community of security professionals. This will position you as someone that people want as part of their networks

Don’t forget to pay it back

And that brings me to my first point again. Maintain your network, and always be on the lookout for ways you can help your network. Even something as small as connecting somebody looking for a job to a potential opportunity can help.

Let me know what you use to network and feel free to reach out to me directly to ask for any advice.