Information Security! My Education Plan Update

Years and years ago. Before my children came along, early in my first marriage, while I was pursuing a career as an airline pilot, not long after college. (This would be in the early to mid-90s.) I became enamored with the security side of computers.

Other career interests and life distracted me from diving deep into the topic. Though every now and then I would get a taste. Securing a compromised web site (comment system on WordPress I believe) or someone finding a port left open and taking over a machine would kick in a delightful mix of my inner detective and problem solver.

While I have enjoyed the studying I’ve done in machine learning my friends tell me I’m actually animated about security.

Passion.

What tickles your fancy and drives you to learn? Sometimes we don’t know and that’s cool. Get started. Sometimes we are drawn down a path. This is where my path has brought me. I have a feeling I’ll be mixing machine learning and security together in fact.

Since I’m both the President and only student at this school I’m making a change to the curriculum. Effective immediately. When I’m not doing WordPress projects, our studies will be geared towards info security.

Courses

Yes. We’re looking at a huge field of study. Figuring out what and where to focus is tough.  I’ve been using Hacker News and reddit quite a bit to come up with a book list.

Here’s a start for the reading part of the coursework:

• Continue with “Coding the Matrix”

Proficiency in Python is very important and linear algebra looks like a solid math tool to have in my math kit.

The following books are in the mail:

• The Web Application Hacker’s Handbook: Finding and Exploiting Security Flaws, 2ed
• Gray Hat Python: Python Programming for Hackers and Reverse Engineers

Working through them and documenting my learning process on this blog and at GitHub is my plan.

There are some security related courses on Coursera I’m keeping an eye on.  I may sign up for them when they are run again.

Home Lab

My lil’ home lab is set up for now.  The sister mini is DOA.  So my little lab is a Mac Mini (2006) running Debian, maybe an eeePC, and my laptop running Fedora.  The lab is on a sub network of the home network which is getting me re-familiarized with networking basics like hosts, and friends.

Setting up software such as WordPress for study purposes is one idea.  Though there are many possibilities. Stockfighter.io looks like a promising spot for practicing and learning, too.

Learning Fast

Something I’m going to need to address is my rate of learning.  Accelerating my learning process is going to be important.  My 20’s were quite a while ago. Integrating new information rapidly and being able to use it will help me get to a place where I am valuable to future clients/employers.

One accelerated learning technique I’m starting to use combines multiple input types for my brain.  Drawing and writing notes, for example.  The idea is to facilitate learning with greater and more levels of engagement. I’m also going to start publishing the sketchnotes as blog posts.  Turning this blog into a graphic experience as well as textual.

The Sketchnote Handbook - Mike Rohde

Thank you Sacha Chua at sachachua.com for introducing me to sketchnoting.  She has some great examples on her blog.

This is where I’m at so far.  Tips, feedback, internships are all welcome!