Hello world!

Welcome to Cybr.

After moving to the U.S. when I was 11, I turned to computer games since I wasn’t the most social kid on the block. One thing led to another, and I got involved in “clans” for various video games, like Starcraft 1 and Call of Duty, or more simple and in-browser games.

It didn’t exactly win me any popularity contests in school, but it forced me to have to learn general IT skills like programming, basic computer administration, and more relevant to this post, cybersecurity skills.

You see, people can get really into video games to the point where there ends up being “wars” between the clans. Except the wars oftentimes left the games and could end up getting nasty.

All that to say that I’ve been trojaned more times than I care to admit, my websites have been hacked and defaced, I’ve had people find out where I lived and threaten my family, and the list goes on.

Luckily, most people, at least in that age group, talked more than they acted, so nothing serious ever came from any of it, and I decided that it wasn’t for me anymore so I left that scene.

But, from all of that, I built skills that prepared me for a career in IT, even if I had no idea at the time. For example, I had to build bots — like chatbots and others. I had to build various websites, set up hosting before cloud computing became what it is today, etc…

The thing is, the world of open source was nowhere near what it is today, so a kid in his teens didn’t have access to as many tools and resources that are available today. There were some tutorial sites out there, but IT training was nowhere near as accessible as it is today.

I say that because I struggled to learn. The struggle was good in the sense that it taught me to persevere and to really learn things by rolling up my sleeves, but sometimes it was bad because I’d give up since I couldn’t find answers and I didn’t know where to find help.

I’m still relatively young, so I’m sure many reading this are probably snarking at how easy I had it compared to them, and that’s definitely fair!

But, the point is that while it’s gotten significantly easier for people to get started in the world of cybersecurity (or even more broadly, InfoSec), there’s still a lot of room for improvement.

More recently, I’ve worked towards helping individuals and organizations learn how to use cloud services (primarily AWS). I kept hearing over and over again that cybersecurity was difficult for them and that this kind of training and community would be very helpful, yet wasn’t easy to find.

So, the Cybr team, all of whom are passionate about helping others learn and grow because they’ve also had to roll up their sleeves and figure things out, has embarked on a journey to create a diverse community with training resources. No matter where you are in your cybersecurity learning journey, we want to provide the inspiration, information, encouragement and support that you need to reach your goals.

The days of thinking about cybersecurity as dark, scary, magic that only certain people can harness, are over. Learning cybersecurity shouldn’t be scary, overwhelming, or unwelcoming. We believe that it should be for anyone and everyone who has an interest and an ounce of determination.

Join us on our mission to make the world a more secure place.

Christophe & the Cybr team.