It may seem like everyone in infosec has always been a hacker. However, many of us have come to hacking from other industries, and as we make our way through the infosec community it’s often hard to find others like us. This is a conversation for every hacker who started as a mechanic, a kindergarten teacher, or a gender studies major: let’s talk about where we came from, how we got here, and some of the unique challenges we’ve come across as hackers with “past lives”.
Kat Sweet will soon be rejecting the conventional wisdom of “don’t quit your day job” and returning to school full time to study network security. A proud alumna of the BSidesLV Proving Ground, she has also spoken at Skytalks, BSides Indy, and CircleCityCon, as well as the sci-fi convention WisCon. Her Amateur Radio Extra Class license (K7FTW) gives her the opportunity to be a frequent volunteer examiner at security cons and at home. She also teaches lockpicking classes at her friendly neighborhood hackerspace, The Bodgery. Kat lives in Madison, WI with two of the best social engineers she knows: her kittens.