Who Am I

My name is Stephanie. I was born in Australia which is an amazing country. I have come from a sales/ service background. I spent many years working at McDonalds and for a garage door company. After being made redundant from that company I made the decision to go and study IT at TAFE

I have always had an interest in IT but was told when I was a teenager that women do not go into IT - specifically cyber security. I then went on to complete a certificate 3, certificate 4 and a diploma in Networking at TAFE. My first IT job was working for an MSP on their service desk. This was a great experience of how enterprise clients work as I was positioned at the client’s site. 

After 11 months I was given the opportunity to move into an End User Computer role specialising in the Mobility team (where we predominantly looked after mobiles and tablet devices). After approximately 6 months I moved to another team that  worked on laptops. 

After working in desktops on 2 different customer sites I was successful in moving into my company's Security Operation Centre (SOC) where I was working as an associate analyst. 

Moving into the SOC was an amazing learning experience. I learned a lot about how SOC’s operate and the basics of how to investigate. After 11 months there,eventually a position became available at Huntress that I could not pass up. 

Working at Huntress has been amazing and I have been able to learn how to investigate deeper. I have been able to see things on a global scale and see unique threats. We get to see adversary activity from countries like Russia and South Africa which you normally don’t see on internal SOCs.

What I am trying to show is that you don’t have to go directly into IT or Security, you can take different paths and still get there and previous employment can help you in those positions. Here is what I have learned at my previous jobs and how they help me in my day to day job at Huntress.

McDonalds

I learned patience and how to talk to customers. This helped me in my service desk and EUC days. These 2 roles are customer facing. 

Garage Door Company. 

 I learned organisation and how to write documentation. I learned to manage stock and ordering which has helped when I was in EUC. 

MSP

This is where I started out in IT. I put all  my knowledge of helping customers, writing documentation and organisation. 

SOC Finally

When I moved into the soc I have been able to use all of the skills I have learned. Especially with working at Huntress. With Huntress I see attacks from around the world and in various forms. This is a unique experience compared to most SOCs in Australia who mainly see activity locally.