A key part of any successful career is networking inside your company and outside of your company. Networking internally can be as simple as identifying the people from other teams you will be working with the most and learning more about them. Being intentional and genuine in getting to know people. This will not only make your job easier when you must ask for help in various situations, but it will also help you grow as an individual. If you are an introvert like I am then talking to new people does not come easy. I have gotten much better at this, but it is still difficult for me to this day. It may even be a good idea to speak with your internal security teams and get to know them. Learn about what they do, what they specialize in, how they got into security and if they enjoy it. This could make a transition to security easier if/when an opening becomes available.
Whenever I go to any company, I always work to build an internal network with teams that I will be working with frequently. It is easy to eventually get used to someone’s voice over the phone and naturally growing conversations from there but it adds value when you stop by someone’s desk to say hi and see how their day is going (of course when they are not busy). I do my best to do this regularly about once a week to touch base with the various teams and not only see how they are doing but also offer up my skills as well regardless of if I have the capacity to help them or not. An example of this is when I worked for an extremely high pace environment where changes were happening every single night of the week 7 nights a week by my team alone. There would be multiple times when I would need other teams SME’s (subject matter experts) on my changes to ensure everything went well with my teams change. This is a difficult thing to ask for especially when everyone is already working far more than 40 hours a week. Developing relationships with those teams SME’s made asking for this assistance much easier down the line. They knew that I would only go to them if I had nowhere else to turn and I made that clear with them on multiple occasions, I would typically run through a laundry list of sources and people I went to before going to them and would emphasize I had nowhere else to turn at this point. I have found this to be a great way of requesting assistance from anyone and that is what I expect as well when others come to me for assistance. I want to know the person asking for the assistance at least tried to solve it on their own first. This process may not work for everyone, everyone of us is different but this just shows an example of what I did that worked. At the end of the day I was always able to get a willing and able resource engaged at all hours of the day and night based more on relationships than a need to do. I have experienced it where these very same resources would get on other more critical calls and start arguing that they should not be on the call but when they got on mine there was no fight and little push back. They knew that whenever they would be engaged on an issue with me that they would be respected and appreciated and that we already explored every other option at that time. Having this type of understanding between key personnel on other key teams is critical to having a successful career at any company no matter how long you are there for.
Networking externally outside of your company is also key to your success. I know many may disagree with this point but I think it is very valuable to step outside your normal bubble and learn what others are doing, what they are learning and maybe you can deploy some of these ideas in your own environment at work or at home. Some of my most successful ideas for projects were developed with friends I met at Burbsec talks. You not only get to talk to colleagues about your challenges you are facing but you get to hear others challenges as well which will force you to think on a different level to solve different issues. When we are locked into our companies, we only see our company’s issues. This is great to gain new skills and learn more but eventually you will start to plateau, developing an external network will force you to always grow your skill sets.
Meeting other people in security at other companies, specializing in other areas is key to growing and expanding your own skill sets. When I was not in security but doing everything I could to get into security I would go to as many Burbsec meetings as I could to meet new people and learn new things. Even when these talks were well beyond my skill set and well beyond anything I could even understand I still pushed myself to go even when I knew no one there. I pushed myself to get out of my introverted environment and go out to meet other like-minded people that maybe someday would be able to lend some advice for how I could land a job or solve an issue at work. Building a network is key, I lean on my network and they lean on me. Most of the time when I have a problem at work that I cannot seem to solve I will reach out to my network and see if anyone else has encountered this issue before or if anyone has an idea of how to solve it. This not only helps you in your career at your company, but it also strengthens and broadens your skill sets by forcing you to think outside the box. When someone in my network references a new solution or a new way to solve a problem I am growing as I am working through that solution.
I hope you enjoy the content, these are only my thoughts based on my past experiences that have brought me to where I am today. Thank you for reading.