How to Get Started in Cybersecurity - Part II - Lost in the Wilderness, but Finding My Way to IBM

I considered calling this installment, "Why the hell did you become a doctor?" but that's only a small part of the story, a veritable an 18-foot wave on my slow boat to an unintentional career in cybersecurity.

I'm getting ahead of myself here, but the 'wilderness' designation comes from moving to Vermont from New Jersey to attend medical school. Talk about a culture shock! I felt lost up in Vermont until I decided to leave medicine and do what I always loved, computers and networks.

Part I of this story is missing a few things. Okay, maybe more than a few things. There were other interests besides phreaking and hacking, including music, specifically Factory Records, Manchester, UK. 

Many times I would combine my love of making things push far beyond their original intent with my passion for music and other interests. For example, in the 70s and 80s, it was massively challenging to learn about or obtain certain events, releases, and happenings in the UK music scene, mainly if you lived in the US. I was fortunate to live a bus ride from the East Village in Manhattan or uptown Manhattan, where many of the small clubs and concert venues were located.

As the eighties marched on, and the Internet as we know it today, failed to make an appearance, I would host BBSs primarily to exchange information about my interests. My interests varied wildly, so topics included all this esoteric - album release dates, band gossip, concert dates, meetups, programs, chemistry, information about networks, hardware hacking schematics, the best ways to accomplish specific difficult tasks, like getting into and out of NYC from the suburbs without your parents finding out.

My mom was of a particular cultural persuasion where success meant life. I recall her saying to me, maybe to have me leave those pesky computers and modems behind, that the most successful people are "doctors, lawyers, and engineers" in that order.  To me, that was equivalent to her throwing down the gauntlet. I saw it as a challenge. Unfortunately, my motivation violated a rule that I lived by in almost every other circumstance, which was, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something. Of course, I was intelligent enough to get into and attend medical school, the first profession on her professional matrix. I knew that out of those three choices; she sincerely wished that I'd become a physician. I had to prove to myself, to her, and everyone else that I could achieve this. 

By that time, I had a series of after school jobs, including a stint at KPMG, back when it was known as Peat Marwick. There, I had access to a mainframe and frequently asked for and was granted tours of the data center. 

My passion for technology never ceased. Even though I went to University to study biology and psychology in preparation for attending medical school, I spent a tremendous amount of time with lab computers and equipment. I also loved the chemistry lab because synthesizing any substance was possible. Tell me something was impossible or even improbable, and I'd take that as a challenge to prove you wrong. Tell me I lacked knowledge in some area or another; I would learn everything there was to know about that subject. Ego and self-confidence are potent motivators.

In 1990, I traveled to London and Manchester UK seeking interviews from all those involved in post-punk and Factory Records, intending to write a screenplay. I used my new IBM-compatible 'clone' PC and Wordperfect to write it.

At this point, the PC clone was running DOS, of course, and an early version of Windows, Windows 2.0. I didn't find Windows particularly useful because I was a command-line guy. I recall having to launch Windows if you didn't instantiate it in autoexec.bat, and I barely ever did. Upgrading to Windows 3.0 and Windows for Workgroups 3.1 put the GUI front and center, but I still recall using the MS-DOS prompt exclusively for quite some time.

While attending medical school, I found my way to the professor responsible for managing the medical school network. I immediately volunteered what little time, ironically, I did not have. At the time, the 'main' HP server, which was just a PC, ran the first version of Linux, 0.01, which we downloaded from the comp.os.minix newsgroup. My eyes lit up because Linux supported Bourne shell and C-shell. This POSIX-compliant OS was what I grew up on and didn't have to use a mouse to get things done.

Running Linux for all of the medical school staff and students introduced me to all things proto-Internet; the Elm and Pine email clients, Vi and Pico text editors, Tin newsreader for newsgroups, Internet Relay Chat, and Gopher. Mosaic came later. I was familiar with the Bourne shell and C-shell from back in my early days connecting to UNIX systems. These client applications made connecting with the outside world more accessible and exciting.

Fast forward to the day I decided to leave the medical field, and I was driving to a rural town in Vermont, 50 miles away from the nearest hospital. I was miserable, and I thought, I can keep doing this and be miserable, but medicine is not for me. Alternatively, I can try to get a job at IBM and ensconce myself in technology. IBM had a large mask house facility up the road from where I was residing at the time. The IBM Essex Junction, VT facility was internally referred to as 'Burlington,' but geographically they were outside the Burlington city limits and for a good reason, they needed the space. The campus housed what I recall to be 28 buildings. Some of these buildings were a quarter-mile long. This facility became famous at the time for developing, announcing, and manufacturing the PowerPC chip. PowerPC would eventually power the latest crop of Apple Macintosh computers during the era of the return of Steve Jobs.

Getting a job at IBM with no professional computer support experience was a trip. I applied, and for months, I heard nothing, prompting me to take a temporary job at Lane Press as a 'Production Coordinator.' They put me in charge of high-end magazine publishing fresh out of medical practice. How odd. I went with it, but within three weeks of landing the printing press gig, I got a call at 7 am one morning. It was a teleconference call with over 20 IBMers on the line asking me random questions about my work history, TCP/IP, packet switching, AIX, OS/2, LAN Manager, and the OSI Model. I was sincere in my responses and thought I'd never hear back from them. 

The very next day, I was offered a job as an OS/2 and AIX Support Specialist for an internal group called DCS. DCS stood for Decision Support Services. To this day, I have no idea why we were called that, but hey, IBM, right?

Stick with me, the part about how to get started in Cybersecurity is coming up.

On to part III --->