Mentoring the Intelligent Deviant: What the special operations and infosec communities can learn from each other

ShmooCon XV - 2019

Presented by: Paul Brister, Nina Kollars
Date: Saturday January 19, 2019
Time: 15:30 - 15:50
Location: Main Room
Track: Bring It On

There are unique challenges to developing and mentoring communities of practitioners whose jobs are, by design, intended to skirt laws and bypass security systems. As such, there are bizarre similarities between the hacking and the special operations communities. Nina (an analyst of military technology and infosec) has been attempting to norm a very reluctant special operations officer (Paul) into the community. Paul, as a career officer in the special operations community has endured several ShmooCons and at least one BSides. Together we present the contrast and similarities of the people/threat landscape/and professional development challenges and what the two communities can learn from one another–namely a deeper understanding of what it is like to develop and mentor intelligent deviants.

Paul Brister

Paul Brister is a career special operations officer. He has deployed to all sorts of places to do all sorts of things. For the past two years, he has worked in the Pentagon as a Strategic Plans advisor to the Secretary of Defense.

Nina Kollars

Kitty Hegemon (Nina Kollars) (@NianaSavage) is a teacher and social scientist at the Naval War College who has studied both the Special Operations and info sec communities. Her work emphasizes horizontal knowledge transfer and the adaptive behaviors of soldiers on the battlefield.


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