Educational Grit and Quantum Communications in Space Security

Embarking on the rollercoaster ride of higher education can be daunting, but what if it's the key to unlocking a career in the complex world of cybersecurity? That's exactly what I dive into in our latest episode, as I peel back the layers of my own experience, from the decision to pursue advanced degrees to the unexpected shift from a law enforcement dream to the cutting-edge field of cybersecurity. The journey is fraught with financial strain and motivation hurdles, but the grit needed to persevere becomes palpable as I discuss those pivotal moments that shaped my academic and professional trajectory.

As we navigate through the intricacies of satellite security, you'll get an insider's look at why this lesser-known aspect of cybersecurity is becoming a battleground for future conflicts. The conversation orbits around the emerging threats to our space assets and the gravity of their role in global communications and national defense. My ongoing PhD research on securing satellite-based quantum communications enters the spotlight, offering a glimpse into the preparation necessary to safeguard not just our information, but the very infrastructure that could be targeted by adversaries from miles above us. Join us as we conclude with a heartfelt appreciation for our supportive listeners and a promise to continue delivering content that resonates and informs, all while teasing the thought of a well-deserved weekend break.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

How's it going everyone? This is another Security Unfiltered episode. So this is take two of doing this. I very rarely do take twos, but somehow the last recording didn't record any of my audio after 35 minutes. So that's fantastic. And you know, this video would have been posted on time if I didn't get so frustrated last night after I realized that it didn't record the audio. I kind of just gave up and went and watched some YouTube. But here we are right.

Speaker 1: 0:36

So I told you yesterday on LinkedIn, if you're following my LinkedIn, if you're not, go check it out. But I said on LinkedIn that I'm starting my LinkedIn. If you're not, go check it out. But I said on LinkedIn that I'm starting my PhD. So it's actually a little bit late. My first semester in the PhD was actually last fall and I actually got accepted in the PhD in November of 2022. 2022.

Speaker 1: 1:10

So you know, today I want to talk about. You know kind of I guess, where I've been with the mentorship episodes or the second episode every week, because I haven't really been posting those very much this year and I don't know if I will post a whole lot of them this year. To be completely honest with you, you know I want to talk about my master's, how I decided on getting my master's and then how I decided on getting my PhD, why I chose the school that I did and everything else like that. So let's dive in. You know, I would say from the beginning of the year, you know, I might've been a little bit burnt out, I might've been a little depressed, um, very unmotivated to really do much of anything. You know, um, that includes, like working out and everything, like I was just, I was just straight up unmotivated. Um, it's, it's really hard when you're behind a camera, you're behind a mic, um, you're talking with interesting people, but you're not sure if those conversations are helping anyone. You know, you're just not sure. Um, and it's always good to hear from people. You know, saying that like, hey, your podcast has helped me make this change in my life. You know, I'm living a better life now because of it. That absolutely happens and I'm very grateful every time that happens. I feel like it's kind of strategic when it does happen. Um, but you know it's difficult. You know, because I want this platform to be able to help people. You know, I want, I want this platform to be able to help people. You know, I want. I want this platform to be able to help people get into the field that I love, which is cybersecurity. Um, because I had such a difficult time getting into this field and it made no sense for why it was taking so long, why it was so difficult. And uh, yeah, that's what this platform is all about.

Speaker 1: 3:10

And so, in a part of my journey, I'll start back with my bachelor's. You know, I got my bachelor's with in criminal justice, with a double minor in economics and international relations, right, and so I had work experience in it during college. It was like high it help desk, you know. So I figured the best way to pay these student loans is to get a help desk job until I get into my law enforcement career that I wanted to get into. But, you know, little did I know that law enforcement career would never happen. Thankfully, it would never happen, you know, and during my journey I was having a lot of issues getting into security.

Speaker 1: 3:55

I was being told I was doing all the right things to just keep on going forward, but after a thousand interviews you start to question if you're doing the right thing, you know, if this is for you, and when I say a thousand interviews. I do actually mean a thousand interviews. I was doing two to three interviews a day, five days a week, for probably a year and a half um, before before I gave my into my masters. It was pretty crazy, um, you know, because I once I set a goal, um, that turns into everything that I do. That becomes everything that I do. That turns into everything that I do. That becomes everything that I do. You know I don't take it lightly. When I set a goal, I achieve my goals really at all costs, it doesn't matter what it takes.

Speaker 1: 4:55

And I got to the point where I said to myself okay, like you have to change it up, this isn't working. Whatever you're doing now, you know, getting your security plus making connections, trying to learn more, researching that sort of thing it's not working. We need progress now because you're making $45,000 a year with student loans, a car payment, rent, food, cell phone, all the different bills that add up over time, only making $45,000. I mean, there was literally days that I would have to choose which meal I wanted to have that day. You know I never had breakfast, but I had to choose between lunch and dinner, for which one I wanted to have. You know, because I didn't have enough money to pay for the food to. You know, have that extra meal. You know, I didn't have enough money and a lot of people would say, oh, just have groceries. Yeah, groceries take money, you know, and I had groceries, I just didn't have enough. You know, that was a problem. And somehow, somehow I get denied for food stamps, right. Somehow, somehow I get denied for food stamps, right.

Speaker 1: 6:04

So I'm in this bad situation and so I started looking into master's degrees. You know, and you know, my criteria for a master's degree that I was going to go down it had to be hands on. It couldn't be just theory, just book work, you know, just multiple choice tests and whatnot. There was some multiple choice tests, don't get me wrong, in the program. But you know, one day, right, you are talking through some slides for an hour or two with your professor about wireless security, why it matters, why these other protocols are so vulnerable, and things like that. The very next day, maybe even that same day, you're doing a lab, practicing the exact thing that you were talking about, you know. So you're talking about why WEP is bad. Well, let's go put it in the lab and see why it's bad. You know, they teach you how to create your own cybersecurity lab, how to do all that work, and I think now they even have what's called a cyber range. You know where students can go and log into this environment and do whatever they want to it, and it's a really good learning tool, I would say.

Speaker 1: 7:26

So that's really what I wanted from a program, and I looked around and there wasn't a whole lot of programs, honestly, and they were all pretty expensive. You know, when you get your bachelor's degree, your bachelor's is, you know it's typically pretty significant. You know, if you're going to a four-year university, an accredited institution, it's a pretty significant amount of money. I didn't want that. I wanted something that made sense for the cost. And so, you know, I started looking around and I saw Capital Technology University and I did a little bit of research into it.

Speaker 1: 8:08

And you know, in my research I found that essentially, capital Technology University was born from NASA and the NSA getting together and saying we don't have enough talent. There isn't enough talent in the market that is prepared to go through any of our training programs, like there's literally no one. So we need to develop a training pipeline, and that training pipeline will be kept Capital Technology University, and with that it's going to be a hands-on program. They're going to learn skills that we actually need in the real world and we'll go from there, and so that's where this school came from. You know, that's the thought behind this school, and everything is actually teaching you real world cybersecurity skills that you need to be successful, not just in your job, but just to be successful in the field, and that holds true in my opinion. You know, with that strong background of agencies and whatnot, you know the professors are going to be top tier professors. They are top tier professors, they are experts in the field.

Speaker 1: 9:30

You know, for a forensics class, I had someone that had been doing forensics for 20 years and she's leading Symantec's division of forensics and you know she's worked on so many cases and you know she's worked on some very high profile, big name um. You know cases or situations right, and so that's extremely interesting, extremely beneficial to you know, have that sort of experience in the Zoom call right. And so I went and I got my master's in cybersecurity. It was a great program. I don't regret it at all. It was very well worth the money. The price was definitely below everyone else and you know, obviously I took out student loans but, you know it, looking back on it, I could have afforded that like today. Today, if I'm making the same money and I had to get my master's, I could probably afford that on my own.

Speaker 1: 10:46

So right after my master's, you know, I started to look into getting a PhD. I already got the master's. Why not the PhD? Let's see if it's actually worth it. And I think either the year that I graduated, which was 2018, or the next year, which was 2019, capital Technology University came out with a PhD program in space cybersecurity and I looked into the program a little bit, but I couldn't really find anything, you know, in the marketplace that would indicate you know value, or ROI as I like to look at it from, and so I didn't really dive farther into it. You know, I would stay in touch with the deans and everything and, um, I I would, I would try to get a feel for the market, you know, because I don't want to do something that is just going to be a paperweight, that's going to take up a whole lot of time, money and effort and not give me anything. You know, the ROI has to be there and I feel like not everyone looks at their education the same way as I do with that. Well, I look at education as an equation of ROI.

Speaker 1: 12:05

If I get this bachelor's degree, how much money can I make with this bachelor's degree? Can I live off of that bachelor's degree? Same thing for the master's, same thing for the PhD. You know, does it enhance anything that I'm doing right now? Does it take me to another stratosphere of you know, finance and positions and roles and stature within companies and things like that? Right, those are the things that I factor into my ROI. And so you know this was years, right, this was years, every year, reaching back out, doing more research, figuring out if this PhD thing is for me, and, sure enough, in 2022, when I reached out, they had a bit more data around it. They had people that had gone through the program, that had landed jobs, and they had exact numbers of you know what those roles you know really commanded in the industry or whatnot. Now these roles may not be that big right now, but everything that is what I would call like a mile marker or a stepping stone or something in your career.

Speaker 1: 13:25

I try to plan out five to 10 years. So I did this with cloud security. I got into cybersecurity and I immediately said what part of cybersecurity is going to be big in five to ten years? I came to the conclusion that cloud security was absolutely going to be one of them. Ai would be another one. Ai is beyond my skill set. Cloud security is right within my skill set. So I got the required experience and I got into cloud security. Sure enough, you know, it has become what it is today. It's basically turning into its own security team where you know the cloud security team will have its own domains of cloud security infrastructure, serverless.

Speaker 1: 14:10

You know all these different things because the skill sets are so broad. So I did the same thing with the PhD. You know where is cybersecurity going, what's going to be valuable in five to 10 years these different things because the skill sets are so broad. So I did the same thing with the PhD. You know where is cybersecurity going, what's going to be valuable in five to 10 years. It's very difficult to determine the 10 year part. 10 years you know, honestly, more of a guess, but five years you can absolutely do an estimate of what's going on in the world, where the market is going, are there new roles and positions, with a new requirement coming available and they're not being filled. You know things like that.

Speaker 1: 14:44

So I looked at the world holistically and I determined that satellite security is going to be a big field in the future. I don't know how big it's going to be, but it'll be a cornerstone of cybersecurity. The reason why I say that is because a lot of the conflict going on in the world doesn't seem to be going away right. The next major war is going to start in space before anything ever happens on the ground. At least that's my opinion, and I've talked to a lot of people in the military that are higher up different generals and colonels and things like that and they all agree that's exactly where it is going, and that's why the Space Force was actually created, because, essentially, the Air Force owned that function and it was becoming too large for the Air Force owned that function and it was becoming too large for the Air Force to manage, and it wasn't right because the Air Force was being pulled in so many areas. And so that's why the Space Force exists, which is an interesting name, by the way.

Speaker 1: 15:55

But you know, I determined that this would be an area of focus, an area that I should pay attention to, you know, because I always had that mindset of revamping your skills, making sure that, if you're laid off today, that the skills that you have are not so outdated that you can't land a job within a reasonable amount of time. And a reasonable amount of time is two months in my opinion. You know it shouldn't be longer than two months, and in cybersecurity it's really like two weeks. You know you get laid off from a job, you're getting basically a little longer vacation. You know that's, that's what that is, um, and so you know, that's why I started to choose to go down the PhD route, and because I had a better understanding of the marketplace, of what was to come. And you know, sure enough, right, I started my PhD in the fall of last year. And sure enough, just from my podcast, interviewing some interesting people on my podcast, I have interesting opportunities coming up that wouldn't have been available to me otherwise, just solely because of my PhD.

Speaker 1: 17:14

What I'm getting it in? I'll tell you what I'm getting in it. So the topic isn't completely locked in yet. The topic can actually change and adjust as you go a bit, but I'm focusing on how to best secure satellites to enable quantum communications from the ground to the satellite and then to another device, so you can send a text message. It'll be encrypted with, you know, quantum encryption or quantum resistant algorithms. It'll hit the satellite directly because cell towers, you know, can go down and whatnot right and then it'll be directed to the recipient.

Speaker 1: 17:55

This seems pretty trivial, but it's not. In an age where we're moving into AI faster than ever and it seems to be going at an accelerating pace, not a decelerating pace, we are going to have a lot of massive issues and quantum security is going to be a huge part of it, of actually solving those issues. And you know, plus, there is a lot of critical infrastructure in space. There's a huge amount of critical infrastructure in space. You know, internet providers have satellites, gps providers have satellites. You know, if you hit the right satellite, you can knock out GPS for an entire region, if not a country. Okay, so that's a huge, huge thing, right? This should be something that we are actively protecting against. And people will say well, is there any threats going on or anything like that in Russia and China and, you know, potentially even North Korea? Those countries, those uh dictators, have actually attacked satellites in space, from another satellite and whatnot. So it is not farfetched, it is not sci-fi. You know this is a real thing.

Speaker 1: 19:23

That's going to become more and more prevalent and so it's important, you know, for for you as a professional, for you as a father, um, husband, you know, just as a man, right overall, maybe even just as a citizen, is to identify areas of interest and how that outlook looks like and then going after it right to secure your own success. That's, that's the thing that a lot of people don't get Right, and I think this quote really makes a lot of sense. No one plans to fail. They fail to plan. You know you have to be planning ahead for these things. You know, when I'm doing my finances, I estimate out my finances in Q1 for the entire year, right, not just my salary Now I live off my salary, right, but all of the extra stuff that I'm doing. I estimated all out for the entire year. So by December I know exactly what I should have, where I should have it, everything like that. You should really have that mentality with everything you know. In my opinion you should, and you know it's. It's something that everyone should be prepared about. They should be, you know, really kind of driving towards.

Speaker 1: 20:49

In my opinion, wherever that place is that you decide like, hey, this, in five years, this is going to be big In five years, this will matter. Do you have work now? So guess what. When five years comes and someone this will matter, um, do you have work now? So guess what? When five years comes? And someone says, hey, do you have experience in securing satellites? Because now we have satellites in space, maybe your company doesn't even have satellites, maybe they're gonna have satellites and they can go to you and say, hey, you, you have this PhD in satellite security. Right, let's talk, We'll give you a promotion, we'll give you the raise that you need and all this other stuff, right?

Speaker 1: 21:27

If you don't do the work though way now, if you don't do the work ahead of time, that opportunity will not exist. They will not go to you, they will not seek you out. If you apply to it, you will not get it, and that's just a fact, you know. So you have to be planning ahead, you have to be, you know, really adjusting for everything around you. You know, um, to be prepared for it. That's my opinion. You know, other people live their life differently, whether I agree with it or not, it doesn't even matter, you know. But that's just my opinion. That's how I approach things in life, you know.

Speaker 1: 22:10

And another, another factor that went into deciding to get my PhD was the fact that I'm a new dad, you know, and I want to set the bar high for my kids, right, because even if, even if they don't hit the bar and they hit somewhere else, you don't probably be in a pretty good place, right? You know my wife is getting her second master's. She's already talking about PhD and what that does to little kids, you know. And obviously I'm not going to be a drill sergeant and you know you have to. You know, get straight A's and that sort of thing. That's not my personality, that's not how I parent or anything like that.

Speaker 1: 22:54

But when little kids see, hey, both my parents have their master's degrees and their PhDs, we're living in a nice, safe neighborhood, we're driving nice cars, right, maybe there's something to that, you know, it gets into their subconscious and says, hey, maybe this is achievable for me, maybe I should push myself a little harder in this area. At least that's my thought. With it, you know, I could be wrong I'd come back in, you know, 10, 12 years when I'm still doing this podcast and be like, yeah, that is not how it works, right? Um, but at least that's my thought with it. You know, they see that it's possible, they see the value in it, um, you know, for me, I see the value in it. You know, for me, I'm the first kid to get my bachelor's degree, I'm the first to get my master's, and still the only with a master's, and I'll be the first with a PhD and hopefully not the last with a PhD, you know. So I want more for my kids and I think getting that PhD will open up interesting opportunities that are already opening up for me, but it will open up interesting opportunities that wouldn't be available to me regularly.

Speaker 1: 24:11

You know, and that's the whole reason why I'm getting the PhD, because you know, if you do the same thing that you've always done, you're going to end up in the same place that you've always been. I'm not in a bad place, you know. I'm in a pretty good place. I make a comfortable living, I enjoy what I do, you know, and that's a huge plus compared to everyone else, right, like? There's a lot of people out there that are doing something they don't want to do. Maybe you're listening to this podcast and you're in a field that you don't want to do. You're not alone. You know there's a lot of people out there, but you can find something that you want to do that you know brings joy to you and make enough money to survive. And, you know, live a good life Like not just survive, not just get by, but you can live a good life. So you know, that was my whole rationality behind it. Right is, how do I take my career to the next level? How do I prepare for that next five to 10 year trend of areas of cybersecurity? How do I research something that will make sense, that will add value to the space? And, you know, of course, setting the standards for my kids. So you know, that's all that I have, guys, you know, going forward.

Speaker 1: 25:34

I'm not sure how frequent I'll post these sorts of videos. If you know, if there's a certain topic that you want me to cover, that you want me to touch on, that you want my opinion on, please hit me up on Twitter, hit me up on LinkedIn and comment on a post, send me a message, whatever it might be, and let me know that you want to hear about it, because you know, for me it's really easy for me to guess. You know, put a bunch of things on a board. Put a bunch of things on a board, you know, throw a dart at it, and that's what I'm talking about today.

Speaker 1: 26:11

But if it provides no value to you, I don't want to do it, right? So if you find value in a certain topic that you want my opinion on, please send it my way and I will absolutely, you know, address it in a podcast. So with that, guys, thank you, hopefully the audio in this one recorded. I hope you guys have a great weekend. I think we have a long weekend this week, so that's always fantastic. All right, bye everyone.