2024-11-22 –, Ngaio Marsh Theatre
The Cybersecurity industry is full of weird and wonderful people, however much like any other industry, there are often some colourful characters who can make a questionable comment or two which can really crush a young, hopeful Cybersecurity consultant's spirit.
This talk will go over some of the most humiliating and thought provoking experiences that we have experienced while working in the Cybersecurity industry. Including how to deal with these situations and most importantly how not to be a dick in the industry.
Allow Justina and Lou to recount their work horror stories of people being dicks, and how to not be a dick.
We are currently consultants from Bastion Security and have been working in the industry long enough to collect a number of work stories illustrating how people can just be dicks. Think gaslighting you. Think ignoring you. Think telling you that you don't know what 2FA is!
The goal of this talk is to educate our peers to better understand how their actions may impact other people, and what they can do to make sure we are encouraging and supporting new people into the industry. We also want to give you some simple advice so that you feel better equipped to handle situations where you feel like someone is being a dick.
In this talk we recount 3 horror stories from our own experiences - but with a positive spin and a key theme. The key themes we will be sharing as part of these stories are:
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Have your listening ears on - don't think you know everything, we do have important things to say - especially when we are telling you that MFA is not working.
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Be careful with your words - words are mightier than the sword, so please don't tell me I've done something wrong in front of an entire office of people.
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Make sure everyone feels seen - in a meeting of 3 people, it's still easy to leave one person feeling like their perspective is not seen or heard.
We hope that by sharing with you these stories, we educate people how to not be a dick - ultimately making the industry a better place for everyone.
Justina is a penetration tester at Bastion Security Group. She has just over 3 years experience working in Cybersecurity and has a passion for OSINT and Social Engineering. Justina is active in the NZ Cybersecurity space, having run OSINT training at ChCon 2023.
I am someone who found themselves in security through a lot of good luck.
After studying linguistics and French at university I somehow made it into an IT graduate programme and haven't looked back.
I have experienced the highs and lows of both public and private sector, and now currently work at Bastion Security Group within GRC. At Bastion I am a vCISO for several organisations, and enjoy the challenge that is getting buy-in for security from across the business - luckily for me this is where my expensive piece of paper (degree) comes in handy.