The Pentester BluePrint

Foreword

I'd say the most coveted positions in cybersecurity and information technology as a whole are roles as penetration testers, or pentesters, also known as ethical hackers. I want to emphasize the ethical part of that last sentence. There are many that go down the path of self-study, trying to get into the field, who end up crossing the line into unethical and even illegal behavior.

Remember always to use your superpowers for good. Funny enough, when people find out that I'm an ethical hacker, many ask me to break into something for them. They also ask how they can learn what I know so that they can get a cool job. I certainly will point them to two books that I co-authored with Jennifer Jin, Tribe of Hackers: Cybersecurity Advice from the Best Hackers in the World and Tribe of Hackers Red Team: Tribal Knowledge from the Best in Offensive Cybersecurity, both published by Wiley in 2019, to which my friends Kim Crawley and Phillip Wylie contributed.

If I were to point someone trying to get into this line of work, I'd most certainly point them to Phillip Wylie. Phillip is the only person I know that can teach you how to break into a company ethically for security purposes and to have wrestled a bear and lived to talk about it. Like many of our backgrounds, Phillip's was unique and something that should be embraced. There is no one correct path to be a penetration tester.

Phillip continues to pay it forward by helping tons of people to learn about ethical hacking and volunteering ...