Tribe of Hackers

68Jake Williams

“Actively acknowledge the things you won’t be proficient in and seek out experts you can call on when you need solid advice on a topic.”

Twitter: @MalwareJake • Website: www.renditioninfosec.com

InfoSec professional. Breaker of poorly written software. Incident responder. Digital defender. Business bilingual. Jake Williams treats InfoSec like the Hippocratic Oath: first do no harm. By addressing realistic risks, Jake helps businesses create secure environments that actually function. He penetration tests organizations so they can find the weak spots before an attacker does. When an attacker does find a weak spot first, Jake works with the organization to remove the attacker, assess the damage, and remediate the vulnerabilities that allowed the attacker access in the first place. Jake is also a prolific conference speaker, an instructor, and an InfoSec mentor.

If there is one myth that you could debunk in cybersecurity, what would it be?

That everyone who is a cybersecurity expert in one discipline is an expert in all disciplines. Cybersecurity is a broad topic. Nobody knows it all. For instance, I’m an expert in offensive cyber operations, forensics, and incident response. I consider my knowledge base fairly broad, but I’m not a virtualization security expert. When you’re starting out, decide what you want to specialize in and focus your studies there. Actively ...