a personal divergence and offensive security materials

It has been almost 2 years since I changed my job situation up. I was hoping, 2 years ago, to get into a networking or security job when I took up my current role as a Network Analyst. Instead, I found myself back in the hole of Windows web administration and developer support, among many other things some of which does include security. I’ve been slowly clawing my way out of that area, but now the more senior coworker that managed our company’s web environment with me has resigned, leaving me as the sole expert in this area on our team. I’ve definitely had happier days as I now try to catch up on what he managed while also my own stuff. I was hoping I would get out of here before he did so I could avoid this! 🙂

So that means I’m even more stuck in web administration (and various other things) for at least another 6 months here. It really does start to cause one to question one’s career direction or personal happiness just a wee little bit

On the bright side, I do have more things to look forward to here, such as a Foundstone vulnerability scanning box I have sitting in the corner and a web app firewall/load-balance solution on the way in the next few weeks. And I do have a project to upgrade our host-based firewall solution and assume full control over it. But oh how I wish I could leave the developer/web support behind!

I also received access to my Offensive Security coursework this weekend. The material includes a couple PDFs and a nearly 700MB rar of tutorial videos. I’ve yet to extract the movies, but I’m really excited they’re just a download and I don’t have to bother picking them from the server one by one. I also have my access to the virtual labs on their VPN. I’m anxious to start in on learning more about BackTrack 3!