Founder and CEO of Immersive Labs James Hadley takes us through his career path from university to cybersecurity startup. James tells us about his first computer and how he liked to push it to its limits and then some. He joined GCHQ after college and consulted across government departments. Teaching in GCHQ's cyber summer school was where James felt a shift in his career. As a company founder, he shares that he is very driven, very fast and also very caring. James offers advice to those looking to get into the industry recommending they chase what interests them rather than certifications. We thank James for sharing his story with us.
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I was given a computer by my dad when I was about 8 or 9 years old and after that became a bit of an addict in terms of geeking out, so first of all, programming, but then also trying to find ways of doing things that it shouldn't do, be it trying to get to programs that should have been meo, not have the capacity to run or to try and find ways of getting to different parts of the operating system that might have been blocked. When I was at school, they didn't really have much in the way of computer studies, either as a qualification or as a side subject, so at 16 I went to college and specialised into the sort of a TA course in computer studies, and it was after that that I applied for enjoying the GCHQ. I sent the next 10 to 15 years consulting across government departments, the UK Ministry of Defence and some commercial organisations, including sort of spinouts from Betfair, a trading platform, and then it was prior to starting Immersive Labs where I had my most fundamental career change, which is I became an instructor, or I was teaching cyber security as part of the GCHQ Cyber Summer School. Well, what I identified was academic background, had very little bearing or influence on how individuals developed over the course of the summer school, and I realised that passive classroom based learning doesn't really suit the people or the pace of cyber security, and that's because the content is dated very quickly and it's quite one-dimensional, so it doesn't really get the creative minds in the room engaging. I think I'm a very driven individual, one of the things that I'm most proud of is Immersive Labs is the speed of which we've grown over the last three and a half years in the marketplace, so I tell it's very driven, very fast, but also very caring as an individual. My favourite part of what we do is speed, so we react to what's happening in the world very quickly, so for example within four hours of WannaCry hitting the headlines and crippling the National Health Service here in the UK, we were able to get a practical hands-on copy of that lab to all of our customers within four hours, so I think the thing I'm most proud of is the speed of which we can react to helping our customers. As a solo founder, it's quite a lonely experience building a technology company because you essentially have to learn everything, everything across the whole organisation, yourself for the first time, sales, marketing, customer success, technology, support, it's investment, for example, share options, everything that needs doing in the company is the first time that you're doing it, and I'd say the biggest challenge was probably doing it alone. Everything to get into cybersecurity is available on the internet, it's free to acquire and learn, don't get hung up or focused on certifications, for me and for the immersive lab's value proposition, certifications based on multiple choice exams, on a true barometer or evidence of capability, and instead spending time on what actually interests you, for example, blog posts or research, and then try and get that across to prospective employers because that will go a lot further than pieces of paper. I think now in the world we live in, everything works and it's quite seamless, so for example, if you take cloud computing or uploading files or sending emails, everything works and that's because obviously computing is a global worldwide accessible item for the majority of developed countries, when I was younger, sort of going back 20, 30 years, you could actually fix a lot of the things yourself because you had to, or if something didn't exist, you had to create it because it wasn't ubiquitous, and I think because things don't work, you have to apply that troubleshooting and perseverance mindset to achieve your outcomes, whereas there's now, because the world is so interconnected and so global, you rarely get a chance to have to troubleshoot or fix something because if it doesn't, you'd probably find just another supplier or another device to use in order to achieve your outcomes. There was no copying and pasting of code from the internet, you had to figure it out yourself. This September 18th and 19th in Denver, a tight community of leading experts is gathering to tackle the toughest cybersecurity challenges we face. It's happening at MYs, the unique conference built by practitioners for practitioners. Brought to you by Mandiant, now part of Google Cloud, MYs features one-to-one access with industry experts and fresh insights into the topics that matter most, right now, to frontline practitioners. Register early and save at MYs.io/cyberwire. That's MYs.io/cyberwire. [MUSIC]
