2024 Wrap Up!

This episode delves into personal reflections on the year 2024, embracing both challenges and achievements while emphasizing the importance of setting and celebrating goals. Listeners are encouraged to envision their future selves and prepare for an impactful 2025 filled with hands-on learning and expert insights. 
• Importance of self-reflection during year-end 
• Goal setting as a tool for personal growth 
• Celebrating small victories 
• Envisioning your future self and goals 
• Essential skills for aspiring professionals 
• Commitment to hands-on mentorship in future episodes 
• Introduction of expert guests in the upcoming year 
• Perseverance and the realization of long-held dreams 
• Encouragement to take a break and acknowledge achievements

Chapters

• 0:54 Reflecting on Accomplishments and Setting Goals
• 14:42 Achieving Goals With Persistence and Determination
• 26:27 Building a Career in Cybersecurity

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:54

How's it going, everyone? It has been a while since it was just me talking, so this is a little bit new for some new, you know, viewers or listeners, you know whatever platform you're listening on, but you know it has been a year, that's for sure. It has been a year. This year I have posted less than I have in the previous years, mostly out of, you know, protection for my own sanity, right and it has been an interesting year overall, right, like learning new things, experiencing new things. As a new dad, expecting a number two coming in here pretty soon working on the PhD. You know all the million little things that I do, you know, and doing this podcast has been a huge privilege of mine, right, and I've really enjoyed it. Right, and I'm not stopping, mind you. I'm not stopping at all. In fact, in 2025, we actually have someone coming back onto the show in a regular format to provide hands-on, in-depth training, points of interest, knowledge for you to gain, for you to take and gain and put into your own environments, put it into your own knowledge bank so that when you're interviewing for these different jobs, you know, you can say hey, you know, I learned this content from Security Unfiltered. I tested it out on my own environment. I learned it, I played with it, right. I grew upon that foundation that we're going to be helping you build, and so you'll be more prepared going into new roles in 2025,.

Speaker 1: 2:41

You know, and something I want to say right is you know you made it to 2024. I mean, you made it through 2024, right, and 2024 was, no, you know, small, easy year, right, like the entire year just seems like it's been nonstop hurdles the entire time. Obviously not as much as like 2020 or 2021, right, um, but it still feels like there's always something, you know, coming up. Right, and maybe that's just life, maybe that's just you know what life is nowadays, right. But you know, you made it to the end of 2024 and that's an accomplishment in and of itself, right, and I hope that you accomplished every goal that you set out at the beginning of the year. You know, at the beginning of the year, typically I'll put out an episode that's related directly towards goal setting. You know, I've done that the past couple of years. I'll probably do that again in a couple of weeks, but goal setting is very important.

Speaker 1: 3:42

You know, and I'll be honest, right, I didn't complete all of my goals. You know I set a goal of getting an AWS Solutions Architect Associate Certification and renewing the AWS Security Specialist Certification, and I didn't do either, right, I studied here and there, but it wasn't consistent enough to actually achieve the certification, and so I didn't get it because, plain and simply, I didn't deserve it. I didn't put in the work, and you know that is obviously a failure on my end, but, in my light defense, right. I was doing a lot of other things. I was creating content for Cengage. I was creating, you know, podcast content. I was working a nine to five. I'm a new dad, I'm starting to do consulting and whatnot on the side as well, which is something that we're going to dive into Likely in the beginning of January. It'll start to really be talked about more and fleshed out a little bit more. So you know there's been a lot going on. I'm sure there's a lot going on in your life too, right, and so really focus on those victories though.

Speaker 1: 4:49

Right, take this time at the end of the year and reflect on what you actually accomplished this year. Maybe it's one or two things, right, but maybe those one or two things took you six months. You know, eight months, right, that's possible. That's happened to me. But it's also very important for you to identify that and to actually celebrate that right. Treat yourself. You know, typically, typically when I reach a goal or a milestone of some sort, right, I'll go and I'll have a nice glass of whiskey right, I'll have, you know, one of my favorite whiskeys, or something like that right. Or I'll go have a really nice cigar that I normally wouldn't have. Something like that right, have something like that right, where it's like, hey, you accomplished something, enjoy it right. Was it like base skin it or whatever it is. You guys know what I'm trying to say. You know, enjoy the moment, celebrate that success and then get right back to work. Right, give your time, give yourself a chance to feel that success, to enjoy it.

Speaker 1: 5:56

Right, you made it to the end of the year. Maybe making it to the end of the year was your success, right. Maybe that alone was difficult for you. And you know I've been very open. You know mental health and a wide variety of topics, you know, throughout the years and there's definitely been years where just making it to the end of the year was a success, where it was like, hey, I didn't do anything else, but I'm here, right, I'm here. Those are the years also where I found the most growth after it, right, I got through it, I moved through it, I, you know just barely, you know scraped by and whatnot. And then the following year was a huge year of success and growth and milestones that I didn't even realize was possible for me, right? So it's important for you to just openly right, it could be literally to yourself in the mirror right? Hey, this year was really hard. Good job making it.

Speaker 1: 6:52

It's important to identify that, and it's also important to, as the year closes, start switching gears in your mind and thinking about what you want to accomplish in 2025. You know the easiest way to do that. I always recommend it to people put yourself into the future, right. Where do you actually see yourself being? Where do you want to be in five or ten years, right? Well, what does that look like? I mean, truly, truly, envision it Truly. Get that picture in your head. What car are you driving? Where are you living? What does your family look like? Are you married? Are you with kids? All of it? You know how much money do you want to make? All that sort of stuff?

Speaker 1: 7:41

And then, once you have that vision. From there, you know, you can start building your goals. Right, what's the first milestone I need to get into? Or what's the first milestone I need to achieve in order to get into, you know, cloud security, right? Maybe your goal is cloud security. Maybe your goal is just IT, maybe your goal is getting into security. You're already in IT and you're having trouble getting in One. That's why this podcast actually exists. It exists for that exact reason that was willing to give me any guidance.

Speaker 1: 8:15

I kept on being told, literally basically every single day, for two and a half years well, you don't have experience in X, right, and so we're not going to take you, we're not going to hire you. I would get to the final round of these interviews all the time, just constantly, and I would be told the exact same thing. Um and after you know? Two and a half years of being told, no, every single day, I had two final round interviews scheduled for the same day, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. One was in the burbs and the afternoon one was in in uh, in downtown, right, and so I told myself, if I don't get two offers by the end, or if I don't get an offer by the end of the day, right, security is probably not for me, right, I'll probably have to go and figure out something else to do. You know, right, because I had just spent two and a half years trying to get into security, trying to do all the right things, getting the certifications, starting my master's Right and all that sort of stuff, and I walked away with two offers at the end of the day. Right, by the time I got home, I had two offers in my inbox or voicemail and I was blown away, right, and you could also be in that state. And that's where this idea of the podcast spawned from.

Speaker 1: 9:45

And I think in 2025, the podcast is kind of going to, it's really going to get back to its origins, right. 2024, we talked to a lot of professionals in the field. In 2025, there's going to be no difference on that side. Right, we're going to be bringing on experts in the field talking about every topic under the sun, right? Ai security what does that look like? You know what does that even mean? Right, and you should be using it as talking points for yourself when you go into job interviews. When you go into, you know different rooms, right, and you're talking to other professionals. You may have one or two pieces of information or nuggets right that was said on the podcast that you can then use and prop yourself up, make yourself look a little bit smarter, make yourself look a little bit more intelligent, give yourself a little bit of an edge against other people that may be competing for the same job or you know whatever. It might be right, like I'm not saying, you know, be aggressive towards you, know everyone in the workplace, but you have to stick out in interviews somehow, right, and that's how you do it. When they bring up a topic, you need to be able to say, oh yeah, you know what. I've actually been looking into that recently.

Speaker 1: 11:03

I heard this one podcast. They were talking about it. This guy from NVIDIA was talking about AI security. Like, guess what? This podcast exists because we bring on those experts in the field, the absolute top of the line experts, right? The people that I bring on are the best in the world at whatever they do, right, they are the best in the world. And the sponsors that I have for this podcast they are the absolute best products in the world for what they do right. I've had products or companies reach out to me trying to sponsor the podcast before and I didn't believe in their technology. Right, I'm not just taking, you know, people's money and putting them up on my website and sponsoring an episode and this and that. Right, because I, because they paid me you know, that's not who I am. I don't do this podcast to be paid or to be famous or anything like that. I do it to provide value. That's my goal, and so I think in 2025, we're going to be providing a lot more value to my listeners and viewers. We are going to be providing a lot more of that hands-on mentorship type episodes. Right, we spent two years, I believe, right, doing mentorship episodes, kind of coaching you up right.

Speaker 1: 12:29

So now we're going to give you the foundation. Right, you want to get into cloud security. The very first thing, you need to learn Terraform. You need to learn Terraform. You need to know it inside and out. You need to know how to plug up Terraform into your AWS account, what that actually looks like, how to build security in right from the very start in your code, so that when you're pushing out different infrastructure through your Terraform pipeline, that it's secure right from the start, and when people in the future try to create insecure things, we're going to teach you how to identify it, how to fix it automatically, because that's a core tenant of cloud security, whether it's stated in the CCSP or the CCSK or whatever, automating your security controls in the cloud is absolutely essential. So we're going to be doing this hands-on I mean, we're going to be, you know, recording our screens, doing it in our own environments.

Speaker 1: 13:26

I'm going to be right there with you, right, I'll be asking questions, questions that you may have, and if you have any additional questions, you'll have to put them in the comments and we'll absolutely, you know, get to them and answer them and everything else like that, right? But I think that that is going to be a huge shift in the content that's coming out, and I think it's going to help a lot of people, and that's what I'm most excited about in helping someone out there. Another thing is I'm going to bring on more people that I find interesting, that I want to talk to right, and that's not to say that every person that comes on I don't want to talk to right. That is not the case. That's not who I am, right. But I'm going to be bringing on some real heavy hitters in the industry, some real experts.

Speaker 1: 14:20

You know people that you know have hacked airplanes allegedly while they were flying, right? You know all of these interesting people that have done really cool, interesting things. We're going to bring them on things. We're going to bring them on and we're going to be talking about their not just their journey, but let's talk about what they're doing.

Speaker 1: 14:42

You know what they're doing in the field right now. What keeps them waking up? You know wanting to do this thing right, because, I mean, in the world, you can do anything that you want to do, right. Like that's the beautiful thing about life, that you want to do right. Like that's the beautiful thing about life and that's the beautiful thing about America is. You know, truly, if there's anything that you want in life, there's a way for you to get it. You know there's an opportunity for you. Even if you have to build that opportunity from the very beginning, there's still an opportunity for you to achieve it, to obtain it in America, right? I think that is something that is often not looked at or not mentioned right by people that don't travel outside of the country. A lot of these people don't travel outside of their state, you know, or their region in America, right. But you know we're going to be going and talking to you, know, some of the top experts in the entire world, and I think that's going to be really special.

Speaker 1: 15:46

And in 2025, I'm actually going to start doing a lot more security consulting for companies, right. So this is kind of like, I guess, my my PSA to companies. You know, right now, if you are a company that you know has a cloud environment, large or small right, and you need help getting your hands around what's going on in your environment, right, or you don't even know where to start, you know that's where I come in, right? I've done this for many other companies at this point On the side. I've never talked about it or anything like that. I've never talked about it because I guess there's a little bit of imposter syndrome.

Speaker 1: 16:27

If I talk about it, then I have to kind of act on it. To some extent. I have to be bringing in more customers and whatnot, and I didn't know if I was ready for that sort of responsibility at the time, right. So I was still doing the work, right, I was providing the services. I just was never talking about it, never marketing it, never had a website for it or anything like that. Right, some of the top experts in the entire world to look at your environment and tell you you know top five, top 10 things. Hey, this is what you need to do. This is exactly how you do it. This is what we recommend. If you want that, then let me know. You know, please reach out to me. I'm going to be standing up a whole new website and everything just for that sort of service. So, yeah, I mean, I don't know if anything will come of me saying it on this episode, right, I think that we'll probably discuss it a bit more in 2025, in January.

Speaker 1: 17:28

You know, with it being the end of the year, we're going into the holiday season. You can expect, you know, next two weeks minimum two, three weeks that there's going to be no episodes, right, but that doesn't mean that Security Unfiltered, is gone forever. It is not. I'm taking a much needed break with my family. You know, going to get some great family time in here, really going to enjoy, you know, the last holiday of only having one kid, right. I'm sure next holiday season is going to be a lot more crazy with two kids, right. So that's very exciting for me because I love being a dad. It's my favorite thing to do in the entire world. If I could do one thing for the rest of my life, and only one thing, it would be being a dad. That's what I absolutely love. Yeah, a lot more exciting things are coming.

Speaker 1: 18:19

Likely, the next episode that I post will be a goals episode, right? So take the next couple weeks, enjoy the time with your family and start thinking right, what do I want to achieve in 2025, right, what do I want to accomplish? What does it look like five years from now? You know, I'll end with this. You know, almost nine years ago at this point maybe nine or 10 years ago at this point the Tesla Model X was announced. Right, I'm sure a lot of people saw the LinkedIn post. I made a post on Reddit that you know really popped off and whatnot.

Speaker 1: 18:58

But ever since that car was announced, I've wanted it right. I just never had the money to do it. I never had the ability. I didn't think I could do it right, this goal, this goal, was something that I had for so long that I actually forgot about it, right, at some point in time. I forgot about it because I figured that's probably just not going to happen for me. You know, the car is too expensive. It's just not going to happen. You know, and I was. I don't want to say I was okay with it, but I put it on the back burner, right. And then, subconsciously, I was always going to tesla's website, looking at, you know, the model x and whatnot, trying to see you know what configuration is the most cost effective and all that sort of stuff. And, and it wasn't until we learned that we were going to have a second kid and the Q5 that I was driving was barely big enough for one kid. To be honest, right, because I'm a big guy, right, I can't put my seat all the way forward, and whatnot, and so having two kids in there would be a lot, it'd be a lot, it'd be very difficult.

Speaker 1: 20:04

I know your first critique is going to be well, you didn't have to get a Model X. You're 100% right, I didn't have to get a Model X. Model X was actually the last thing I was looking at, right, but talking about it with a friend of mine, he reminded me hey, why don't you look at that Tesla you've been talking about for the past 10 years? Right, and I didn't even think that it was possible. But now, right now, I have a Tesla Model X brand new Tesla Model X sitting in my garage, right? I say all of that because I set that goal literally nine years ago. At this point, right Nine years ago, I was making $45,000 a year. Forty forty-five, right? That's pre-tax, that's pre-tax.

Speaker 1: 20:55

And so you may be in that situation right now where you are not making a lot of money. You have high goals and dreams and ambitions. You don't really even know if it's possible for you, right? But you have this goal made up in your mind. Maybe it's a car, maybe it's a house, maybe it's a family, maybe it's a number right in your bank account, whatever it might be, but it seems lofty to you. But if you do all the right things, you're going to mess up along the way, but if you do all the right things you work diligently every single day at it that goal is achievable In this world. That goal is achievable Still, even to today I picked up the car earlier this week and still to today, it doesn't quite seem real.

Speaker 1: 21:49

To today it doesn't quite seem real, right? Because for a long time I didn't think it was even possible. I didn't think. I didn't think it was for me, right? I mean, even though I'm making several times more than what I was making nine years ago. Right, it just still didn't seem obtainable. And here it is. I say all of that to encourage you to keep going right. Whatever that goal is, whatever your dream is, whatever it is that you're trying to achieve, it is possible, right, and we're going to go into 2025 with an even mindset, a motivated mindset. With an even mindset, a motivated mindset, we're going to get shit done. Right, as a security, unfiltered audience, we are going to go in and we are going to get shit done.

Speaker 1: 22:37

You know, one of the biggest compliments I've ever gotten in my entire career was my current manager, when he was describing me to someone else, because they were questioning how I was working and things like that, and he said you have to understand who Joe is. Joe is like a cyber mercenary, right? You point Joe in the direction you want him to go and you give him the end result. You say I want this as the end result. You tell him if there's a timeline, you give him a timeline too, and when you point him in that direction, you're not going to ask him how he's doing it. You're not going to ask him how he's doing it, where the bodies are buried, whatever it might be, but he is going to come back with that end result within the time frame that you wanted it in.

Speaker 1: 23:28

And that is exactly how Joe works and that is exactly how my audience, you know, I hope, is developing that mentality right, where you know you set a goal and you achieve it. It may take you nine years, it may take you 10 years, 15 years right. I have goals that are 10 years away. Right, and the goals for me, because I'm a little bit of a car guy are all related to really well. Right, because that thing takes and requires a certain amount of work. It takes a certain amount of expertise and discipline and effort and sleepless nights, in whatever area you choose, to accomplish it. Now I'm not telling you to do anything illegal, right. I'm telling you set a goal, achieve it, work towards it, achieve it right and then reset right. So I hit a major milestone this week.

Speaker 1: 24:36

Two, three months ago I didn't even expect to hit this milestone. It wasn't even on my radar, it wasn't right. I was beating myself up all year since, like may, when the model x prices were dropping and I still didn't have a way of doing it right, and so, for me, I was like I'm missing my opportunity, my one opportunity to get this car that I've wanted for nine years, and I'm missing that opportunity and I'm never I'm probably never going to get it again. Right, that's what was going through my head, and so it may have taken me, you know, six months to get it right. Whatever it might be right, but once you set a goal and you start working diligently every single day to achieve it, you get 1% better. Maybe you get half a percent better every day, right? Maybe 1% is too much to ask. Maybe you have five kids or whatever. It might be right, everyone has different lives and different things going on in their life and whatnot. But whatever that might be, as long as you stay committed to it and you work at it every single day, you will achieve it. Eventually, you will achieve it.

Speaker 1: 25:53

So you know, with that, guys, this is the last episode of the year. I'm not going to post anything for probably the next two to three weeks, probably two weeks, but I want to build in a little bit of cushion, right? But 2025, 2025, hard, right. I'm going to post more content than I've ever posted before and I'm going to post more valuable content than I've ever posted before. The interviews will remain the same the interviews I'm going to be bringing on experts, and then that midweek episode towards the end part of the week.

Speaker 1: 26:27

That episode is going to be very hands-on. If you want to learn how to actually do security in an environment in a hands-on way, watch that episode and follow along. We're going to teach you right from the very ground of how to set up your environment on your computer, how to connect it to the cloud and how to deploy things in the cloud. Everything we're going to talk about certifications. We're going to be giving you tips. We're going to be creating courses, all that sort of stuff, everything that you need to be successful in cybersecurity and having a career in cybersecurity. That's going to be on this platform, right, and it may take a while to build it all out, but little by little, 1% better, every single day, it will happen, right, it's going to happen.

Speaker 1: 27:12

So, yeah, thank you everyone for being here, being a part of the audience, being a part of this community. I hope to see everyone at the different conferences. Next year. I should probably be going to DEF CON. I should be going to THOT CON. If anyone in the Chicago area is going to go to THOT CON, you'll see me with my Security Unfiltered shirt and yeah, you know, we'll see where 2025 takes us, but I'm very excited for it. With that, you know, thanks everyone for being a part of this community and I can't wait to achieve what we're going to achieve together. See ya.