New Member Introductions Thread

[Hammad]

Hi
My name is Hammad. I am a system administrator in a local company in Saudi Arabia for more than 5 years.  I am really hoping to learn something from the gurus available on this forum.
Thanks for letting me a part of this.

[icecream-guy]

Hi
My name is Hammad. I am a system administrator in a local company in Saudi Arabia for more than 5 years.  I am really hoping to learn something from the gurus available on this forum.
Thanks for letting me a part of this.

Welcome here.

[deanwebb]

Hi
My name is Hammad. I am a system administrator in a local company in Saudi Arabia for more than 5 years.  I am really hoping to learn something from the gurus available on this forum.
Thanks for letting me a part of this.

Welcome here.

Hello and welcome, Hammad! Glad to have you here!

[davorin]

Hi, I'm Davorin. I am a fire sprinkler system designer with a background in mechanical engineering. It hit me for sure today that this is where I need to be for the remainder of my career years.

Really excited to dig in, lurk a lot and eventually contribute a little.

Thanks

[deanwebb]

Hi, I'm Davorin. I am a fire sprinkler system designer with a background in mechanical engineering. It hit me for sure today that this is where I need to be for the remainder of my career years.

Really excited to dig in, lurk a lot and eventually contribute a little.

Thanks

My daughter also does that line of work, small world... have you already switched into networking or are you planning to make the career change?

[davorin]

Hi, I'm Davorin. I am a fire sprinkler system designer with a background in mechanical engineering. It hit me for sure today that this is where I need to be for the remainder of my career years.

Really excited to dig in, lurk a lot and eventually contribute a little.

Thanks

My daughter also does that line of work, small world... have you already switched into networking or are you planning to make the career change?

Haha, yes it is. I am planning to make the switch, studying for my first certs while working with sprinklers. How did you get into networking?

[icecream-guy]

Hi, I'm Davorin. I am a fire sprinkler system designer with a background in mechanical engineering. It hit me for sure today that this is where I need to be for the remainder of my career years.

Really excited to dig in, lurk a lot and eventually contribute a little.

Thanks

My daughter also does that line of work, small world... have you already switched into networking or are you planning to make the career change?

Haha, yes it is. I am planning to make the switch, studying for my first certs while working with sprinklers. How did you get into networking?

Good person to ask. Dean got a good story.....

Welcome aboard.   hope you are good at math and the powers of 2.. then you should be fine.

[deanwebb]

Haha, yes it is. I am planning to make the switch, studying for my first certs while working with sprinklers. How did you get into networking?

Wow, that's a story... short version is this...

First time I left teaching, I went into IT. I always felt I'd return to teaching, and I did after 7 years of mostly sysadmin work. After another 11 years of teaching, I went back into IT and I knew it would be for good, this time. I didn't go back to sysadmin work because those jobs were already going to VARs or the cloud for small/medium companies and were heading that way for big firms. Networks would always be there, so I picked networking. I kept reading about security stuff, so I focused on security. (What you voluntarily read extra about is a good indicator of what you're interested in.)

First job was with a small firm that needed a guy for 30 working days. 2 weeks into that gig, I got tapped by Multinational Megacorp GmbH. After almost 4 years there, I left to go work for $VENDOR. Your mileage may vary.

[thewhyzyrd]

Hi, I'm Davorin. I am a fire sprinkler system designer with a background in mechanical engineering. It hit me for sure today that this is where I need to be for the remainder of my career years.

It's good to know I'm not the only one jumping in nearly blind.  Spent the last 20 years developing aerospace goodies (avionics mostly).  I get a new role and suddenly I am an infosec professional who can barely spell infosec.

[deanwebb]

Hi, I'm Davorin. I am a fire sprinkler system designer with a background in mechanical engineering. It hit me for sure today that this is where I need to be for the remainder of my career years.

It's good to know I'm not the only one jumping in nearly blind.  Spent the last 20 years developing aerospace goodies (avionics mostly).  I get a new role and suddenly I am an infosec professional who can barely spell infosec.

Good news, you know there's such a thing as infosec. You're already way ahead of most people on the topic.

Welcome aboard, sir!

[DesertFox]

Hello from me as well,

I am chemical / automation engineer with 7 years dealing with chemical / medical equipment and recently moved to networking. I have passed CCNA training locally in the 3-rd world country I am living (Eastern Europe) and still studying for CCNA exam. Found a job beginning on this year as junior technical pre-sales in one of the bigger ISP-s in Europe. Hope to take CCNA certificate 'til the end of this year and head up to CCNP/ CCNA Cyber ops in 2018.

P.S. Sorry if my English is not great.

[deanwebb]

Hello from me as well,

I am chemical / automation engineer with 7 years dealing with chemical / medical equipment and recently moved to networking. I have passed CCNA training locally in the 3-rd world country I am living (Eastern Europe) and still studying for CCNA exam. Found a job beginning on this year as junior technical pre-sales in one of the bigger ISP-s in Europe. Hope to take CCNA certificate 'til the end of this year and head up to CCNP/ CCNA Cyber ops in 2018.

P.S. Sorry if my English is not great.

Which country are you in? I know a lot of guys in Prague and Brno, which is what got me to listen to rock and roll in Czech... and then there were the guys from Poland that taught me the only swear word I need in Eastern Europe.

Welcome aboard and if you're interested in security, my advice is to definitely look at vendors in addition to Cisco for experience and certification.

[DesertFox]

Hello from me as well,

I am chemical / automation engineer with 7 years dealing with chemical / medical equipment and recently moved to networking. I have passed CCNA training locally in the 3-rd world country I am living (Eastern Europe) and still studying for CCNA exam. Found a job beginning on this year as junior technical pre-sales in one of the bigger ISP-s in Europe. Hope to take CCNA certificate 'til the end of this year and head up to CCNP/ CCNA Cyber ops in 2018.

P.S. Sorry if my English is not great.

Which country are you in? I know a lot of guys in Prague and Brno, which is what got me to listen to rock and roll in Czech... and then there were the guys from Poland that taught me the only swear word I need in Eastern Europe.

Welcome aboard and if you're interested in security, my advice is to definitely look at vendors in addition to Cisco for experience and certification.

Yeah, Brno is a great place indeed. Unfortunately, they have equaled the price of water and beer (somebody decides that the beer shouldn't be cheaper)...

Hands-on experience is difficult in this position, but I will try for sure going to Palo, Checkpoint and Zscaler for knowledge and probably some certs as well (those are the major vendors we are using). Just right now the time is precious, with small baby at home. Especially if you have little time to become familiar with all security, WAN optimization and cloud.

P.S. My country is called Bulgaria.

[deanwebb]

I speak enough Russian to know that I don't actually speak Bulgarian.

The experience you will get in your job will depend upon the size of the company you are working with. Small companies means lots of products and some familiarity with each. Large companies means a few products and deeper familiarity with those.

Interesting how we talk about hands-on experience and most of what we do is remote sessions...

[666]

Namaste from India.