Dark Reading's Becky Bracken: Hello and welcome to Dark Reading Confidential. It's a podcast from the editors of Dark Reading, bringing you real-world stories straight from the cyber trenches. I'm Becky Bracken, senior editor and your host. Today, I have taken a little editorial liberty and invited somebody I very much wanted to hear from right now: Hal Pomeranz. Hello, Hal.
Hal Pomeranz: Hey, Becky, how are you?
DR's Becky Bracken: I'm OK. I'm hanging in, I think like a lot of people.
Hal, you're a longtime expert — your resume is distinguished. You've been at the SANS Institute, and you are now an independent consultant. I think most people who know the field already know who you are, but give us a little bit of background and let us know what you've done.
Hal Pomeranz: I've just been around a really long time; I started this whole adventure when I was young. Professionally, I started as a Unix systems administrator and had some early mentors who got me into information security.
In my years in the industry, I did operational IT through the whole dot-com era. When that imploded, I switched over to being an educational software developer for a good chunk of time. Then Rob Lee dragged me into the digital forensics and incident response (DFIR) space, which became a full-time avocation. That’s really what my consulting practice is about these days: full-time incident response, digital forensics, and expert witness work.
DR's Becky Bracken: What you're too humble to say is you are an expert's expert. We first met when you gave us your expert opinions for Dark Reading webinars, where you were deep in the technical weeds. Since we've become acquainted, I have been struck by your wildly encouraging LinkedIn and message board posts — especially right now, at a time when so many in cybersecurity are being laid off.
Navigating Historically Brutal Tech Downturns
Hal Pomeranz: It is an unprecedentedly bad job market right now.