Direct download link: Interview with Kat Sweet
On this week’s episode, Christie interviews Kat Sweet (@thesweetkat). They talk about capture-the-flag competitions, what it’s like coming into infosec from a career in politics, and more.
Show Notes
Capture the Flag games as learning tools
Kat’s article from Issue 3 of this magazine is The Only Winning Move Is to Hack: Playing Capture the Flag to Learn Security.
If you want to try out a CTF from wherever you are, check out one of these CTF practice sites: Hack The Site or Over the Wire. Also visit ctftime.org, a good roundup site for past and upcoming CTFs happening all over the world (both online and in person).
Career-switching from Politics to Infosec
Kat got her first taste of programming via a RailsBridge workshop.
“Politics to infosec may seem an odd path, but many others have found ways to connect their past work to their practice of security. If we hope to move forward as an industry, we need to make more of these connections. Security affects everyone in the world, therefore we need to bring in perspectives from all kinds. Homogeneity does not serve us well.”
Learn more about code-switching from NPR or Wikipedia.
Public speaking and dealing with failure
Kat gave her very first talk at BSidesLV about 3D printing sex toys (NSFW).
In a post called Getting Back Up, Kat writes:
“We try to get all of our failures out of the way in a private, controlled environment so that we’ll be flawless by the time we’re presenting in public, but it doesn’t always work that way. The way to build resilience is to fail forward and fail repeatedly until it becomes mundane.”
TiaraCon
TiaraCon (@tiarac0n) is a 2-day mini conference for women in infosec and their allies. It will take place during Defcon, August 4-5, 2016.
Community Announcements
Checkout DevOpsDays Portland, coming up on August 9-10. Use discount code recompiler2016 for 20% off! We’re also raffling off a free ticket to one lucky Recompiler reader/listener. Enter here by August 1st.
We’re going to be at Open Source and Feelings next week with a special edition of the Recompiler just for the conference! It will feature a few articles from our legacy systems issue, interviews with speakers, and essential conference info. Buy your ticket and we’ll see you there!
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