Hey All!

Figured I would give an actual #introduction now that I’ve been here a few weeks and have a better understanding of the platform.

Growing up, I always had a love for #twowheels. First it was riding on the tank of my dad’s #motorcycle, which quickly gave way to the freedom that riding a bicycle gave me. At 8 years old I was fortunate enough to receive my first dirt bike. I fell in love with motorcycles at this point. I rode from sun up to sun down whenever I wasn’t in school. Eventually I began racing #motocross as well. I won a few trophies and even found ways to use my hobby/passion to do good for others. In 2005, at 11 years old, I organized a motocross event to raise money for the Hurricane Katrina victims. This effort was recognized by the Red Cross and I was awarded a Red Cross National Hero Award that year. Shortly after, I suffered major head trauma from falling 2 and a half stories and lost a majority of my short term memory. After working with a neurologist for several months after, I was able to regain some of it back, but nothing close to my baseline from before the accident. I have found ways to cope, thanks to #smartphones and other methods I’ve learned over the years.

Now that I’ve given an initial backstory of who I am today, let’s focus on how I got interested in #cybersecurity. This one is hard for me to pinpoint. I grew up with a dad who worked in #IT and managed video game stores for side cash. I was always engrossed in the world of #electronics. So was it when I was very young, playing Club Penguin and searching out glitches that allowed me to amass large amounts of the game’s currency? To be honest, at least the first time I really remember realizing I loved this field, was when I got into jail breaking #iPods and #iPhones. I used the root level access it gave me to crawl through the file directory on my iPod Touch and edit my high scores on Doodle Jump, wowing my friends at school the next day. This gave me an itch and before I knew it I was teaching myself how to sniff out Wi-Fi passwords, modify Android’s OS to improve my UI, and get Hackintosh’s up and running. For my senior project in high school I chose to go to a local tech company. I, by pure chance, was assigned to shadow the Director of Product Security at the time. He set-up opportunities for me to shadow the #RedTeam and several other security researchers within the company. All of a sudden, I was learning that I could make something I love into a career. But how? When I went to college, cybersecurity programs were few and far between, so I chose Computer Science, figuring that would at least give me a solid base knowledge of reading/writing code and understanding things at the #Assembly level.

After a #SoftwareEngineering internship and 2 #IndustrialAutomation ones, I landed my first job out of college as an Engineer In Training at a #Fortune500 Industrial Automation company. I quickly worked my way up from Associate (Level 1) to Engineer (Level 2) to Team Lead to Supervisor in just shy of 3 years. I was/am now managing two teams of ~25 engineers (it fluctuates). I fell in love with #leadership and the joy of helping develop others to achieve their own career aspirations. While discovering this aspect of myself, I was #SIMHacked the Sunday before Labor Day of 2020. This experience re-ignited the cybersecurity flame within me. I asked my mentors (both in the cybersecurity) for guidance on how to get my official start in the field. The one told me to get some #networking classes under my belt and earn my #Security+ certification. He told me this in October of 2020 and by January of 2021 I had successfully passed two networking classes and earned my Security+ certification. I wanted to keep the momentum going and asked for the next step. They suggested my #CertifiedEthicalHacker certification next. In December of 2021 I earned this, which is when I began to start my security job hunt. I am still trying to get my first full-time cybersecurity job, but will NOT give up. It is my passion and I know I will not be happy/content until it is my full-time job. I have interviewed at a few different places, but I often get locked out due to the basic qualifications for entry level positions being a couple years of experience.

While this is not the purpose of this post, if you are looking to hire someone who is extremely passionate about cybersecurity (I spend countless hours reading up on it and listening to podcasts each week) and has a work ethic like you’ve never seen before, I’m your guy! Please feel free to reach out to me here or on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/mwlite/in/matthewacameron). I would be happy to discuss any cybersecurity positions you may be willing to interview/hire me for.

Thanks for reading!