New to Cybrary: Joe Perry

New to Cybrary: Joseph Perry

One of the newest members to the Cybrary team is Joseph Perry. You may have already seen his Python for Security Professionals course, but we want to introduce you to the SME behind the course and why Joe is an important part of the Cybrary Team.

There's a New Director: Ready, Set, Action!

As a software engineer, vulnerability analyst, researcher, teacher, and all-around computer nerd he spent 6 years in the Navy, working throughout the DoD and their USG partners doing everything from malware analysis to working in an incubator. He is a graduate of the Joint Cyber Analysis Course, a military training program for Cryptologic Technicians, the NSA’s elite Computer Network Operations Development Program (CNODP), and the ManTech Advanced Cyber Training Program (ACTP). In his spare time, Joe writes RPGs.

The Interview

1. What brought you to Cybrary, and what are your (personal) goals?

"I came to Cybrary because I’m passionate about research and about building the cybersecurity community. My personal goal is to publish my first book by the end of 2020."

2. What do you do at Cybrary, and what does that job entail?

"I am the Director of Research. I’ll be handling public outreach, partnerships, and research projects. I’ll represent the company at conventions and conferences, and provide input on working groups throughout the cybersecurity world. Additionally, I’ll continue to develop content for both our traditional offerings and our Cybrary Live series, and get our research team up and running so that Cybrary can not only teach people about cybersecurity, we can also push the boundaries of the field."

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” -Clarke’s Third Law

3. What courses do you teach?
• Cybrary Live (NIST Workforce)
• Cybrary Live (Programming With Joe)
• Various programming classes (ASM, C/C++, Python, others to come)
4. Any advice you would give to people pursuing online training and/or certifications?

"Discipline is the most important quality in any pursuit. Set yourself a schedule, write it down, and stick to it. Intelligence is great, and talent is nice, but the disciplined and professional will always outperform the talented but lazy."

5. Is there any advice you would give to people looking for a job in today’s market?

"Learn to see the grand vision, not just the day to day. When you go to an interview, do some homework, find out what the company does and what they value, then speak to that."

6. What do you think is the biggest threat to cybersecurity today?

"Thanks to the many and varied “X as a Service” business models in play in the modern technology ecosystem, we now tend to ignore the systems upon which our tools are built. As demonstrated by the Meltdown and Spectre bugs, vulnerabilities exist in bedrock tools and systems upon which we’ve been reliant for decades, and we have fewer and fewer experts who really understand those systems."

Fun Facts:
• What is your ‘go-to’ thing to read? (blog, book, or otherwise…)
  1. I enjoy Lowering The Bar - a legal-humor blog
  2. Sci-fi and fantasy novels (currently: Rereading the Dresden files for the umpteenth time)
• What’s your favorite programming language and why? x86 Assembly. It’s the best job security in the world. More seriously, outside of mathematics, x86 is as close as humans can get to pure logic. You don’t have to worry about linguistic quirks or strange design decisions. You have a handful of registers and a whole bunch of bits.
• If you were a superhero, who would you be?Gritty