About Shak

How I got into cybersecurity

The interest came long before the career did. I was writing code as a kid, back when nobody had heard of Netscape. The paid part started in 1998, in support, where it turned out that being patient was a qualification. I liked the troubleshooting. Done properly, it is an art.

Since then I have spent over twenty years working for cybersecurity vendors, across support, account management, presales and senior sales engineering, in the UK and the Middle East. For the last decade I have been a solutions engineer, and it suits me. It turns out I like an audience, which is not something you find out on a helpdesk or coding on your own, and I would rather work a problem out with a client than present a finished answer at them. The subject has never changed, and I have never wanted it to. The best part of the job is getting to share how I see it.

The after-hours half comes from one stubborn opinion: this industry is nowhere near as good at explaining itself as it thinks it is. So I mentor people getting in and levelling up. I built CyberDesserts because practical, honest guidance that is free, minus the hype, was harder to find than it should be, and the blog is where most of it gets written down. I wrote The King of Cybersecurity because nobody in recorded history has finished a security policy for fun. And I speak wherever people will have me.

Home is Oxfordshire, England, by way of Staffordshire University. The name is Shakel, frequently rendered Shakeel, occasionally Shakil, universally shortened to Shak, and pronounced the same whichever way you spell it. Off the clock: the gym, the table tennis table, and FPV drones I am slowly getting better at not parking in a hedge.