The sub-title to my recent presentation at the SANS WhatWorks in Pen Testing Summit is Remodeling your career for little to no money down. Inside you'll find practical exercises in finding out who you are and what gets your blood flowing. And, although I do offer some advice on pushing your career in this growing field of ethical hacking with some inexpensive (and sometimes free) actions one can take, none of that seemed to be what struck a chord with the crowd.

One of the bullet points paraphrases a quote from the movie, Risky Business, when Joel's father says in a more PC kind of way that, "Every now and then you just have to say what the heck. Make your move." And that is what I did. At the risk of being laughed off the stage, I gave a non-technical talk at a technical conference and talked about life choices, family priorities and the dirty laundry of the male dominated IT world.

I've always been honest and willing to share with the community, and so I will continue to do so. The talk did not inspire everyone, but to the many that came up to me afterwards and the following day with their own career stories and to offer compliments go my deepest gratitude. As promised, I agreed to record this speech and share the MP3 file as well as the slide deck with all of you. Forgive me in advance, but much of the presentation is very personal, but I truly feel that it drives the point home (pun intended).

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Below are the media files associated with the talk available for free downloading: 

MP3

Ed Skouids' intro has a lot of echo, but the audio gets much better when the talk begins. 

Time: 50:40
File Size: 46.3 MB

Slide Deck

Slides: 17
File Size: 1.18 MB

Donald C. Donzal
Editor-In-Chief
The Ethical Hacker Network

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