Br和on Adkins’ Career Journey - Taking Chances 和 Tackling New Challenges

最后更新于2024年8月16日(星期五)18:39:44 GMT

布兰登·阿德金斯是我们威胁情报部门的经理 & 检测工程(TIDE)小组. His career journey spans a variety of roles 和 teams where he has been able to showcase his technical skills in security. 自加入Rapid7以来, 他有渗透测试顾问的经验, 与红队和紫队合作, 和 now as a leader with our TIDE team he supports engineers in writing effective detections for products like Insight IDR.

Adkins is no stranger to seeking out 和 taking on new technical challenges. 加入Rapid7之前, 他建立了一个长期而成功的职业生涯, 获得首席信息安全分析师的职位.

“I decided to come to Rapid7 because I was at a point in my career where in order to advance further, 我要么成为一名人事经理, 否则我就得另寻他处了,阿德金斯说. “At the time, I didn’t feel like I was ready to hang up my hat as an individual contributor. I still felt I had more to offer on the technical side, 和 didn’t want to be done yet.”

This drive led him to pursue his Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP) designation, 使他成为一名渗透测试员. “I got my notification that I had passed my test the day I had my first interview with Rapid7. So the fact that I got the job really shows how they were willing to take a risk on someone br和 new, 给我这个机会，投资我的事业.”

当被问及Rapid7最大的变化是什么时, 他赞扬了他所接触到的人才的素质和才干. “In my past role, I was used to being one of the smartest guys in the room. Coming into Rapid7 和 seeing the depth of knowledge that is here on the team, 以及每个人的专业水平, 我很快意识到我还有很多东西要学.”

阿德金斯受到了周围人的启发, 和 his curiosity 和 desire to keep growing didn’t stay quiet for long. 在他任职期间, 他从红队转到紫队, 和 ultimately started to become curious about the detection engineering team who is responsible for ensuring our products are effectively able to identify suspicious behavior.

“我真的很享受做渗透测试员的时光. I loved purple teaming because I got to work alongside our customer security teams 和 help them identify ways to improve.” This collaborative experience 和 being able to blend his experience from blue 和 red teaming sparked further curiosity in detection engineering.

“I reached out to a few people 和 thought my next move might be to join the team as an engineer. When we actually got to talking, it turns out what the team really needed at the time was a manager. I was hesitant at first, but the more that I thought about it the more I thought, ‘I think I can really help make a difference here 和 do something good.’”

Adkins’ extensive technical background combined with his ability to work collaboratively in a customer-facing capacity ended up being the combination of talent that was needed to help the team work more efficiently. “他们已经有很棒的程序员了. 他们需要什么, 以及我希望带来什么, 是否有人能够与业务对话并为团队辩护, 以消除任何减速带, 并最终扫清道路，让他们能够做自己最擅长的事情。”.

自2024年1月上任以来, 这个团队的规模已经是最初的三倍. “It’s an exciting time to be part of the team because we are getting the support 和 investment from the business to continue to iterate 和 make our products even better.”

他还在继续招聘新人, 支持现有员工的职业发展, Adkins says there are two key factors he looks for to spot high-caliber talent - communication skills, 以及合作的能力.  “Technical ability is obviously important, you have to be able to do the work. 但除此之外, if we’re looking for someone to step into a more senior role on the team, 或者评估某人是否为升职做好了准备, I want to see examples of how they can communicate their ideas 和 challenges effectively, 和 how they use the partnerships we have across the business to collaborate 和 find solutions.”

TIDE团队, Rapid7的工程师坐在客户反馈的交叉点上, 产品管理, 还有我们的安全行动中心. “At a certain point, we can’t do our jobs well without having a partnership with other teams. We need to know from the SOC team if something isn’t working the way it should be. We want to know from our customers 和 Customer Advisors what’s working well 和 what more they’d like to see, 和 we need to work alongside our product teams 和 analysts to underst和 和 synthesize data to get a full picture of the customer attack surface.”

对于Adkins, his journey in cybersecurity is one that has opened a number of different doors as he’s explored new roles 和 teams. His expertise 和 experience has helped support customers around the world in underst和ing their attack surface 和 more efficiently protecting their business from bad actors.

When asked what advice he would share for others looking to grow their career, he shared “When you get an opportunity to try something new - especially at Rapid7 - jump at it. Rapid7雇佣了我作为一个没有任何渗透测试经验的渗透测试员. 四年后, they took a risk on me again as a people leader with zero previous people leader experience. This is a place where these moves 和 opportunities are not only available, 但你周围的领导都支持你. If you have the fundamental skills necessary 和 it’s something you're interested in, 你的事业还有很大的发展空间.”