Charles Henderson

1.

As a kid, most of his friends didn’t have computers, so when his father brought one home one day, he was completely fascinated.

2.

At one point, his mom even told him, “You’ll never get anywhere if you just play on that computer all day.”

3.

Even when he was in college, he assumed he wouldn’t find a fulfilling career path in tech because everything seemed to be centered around writing code.

4.

While he understood how to write code, and respected his classmates who were building new software, he was always much more interested in breaking things.

5.

However, he’d never seen a career path for “breakers” until later after college, when someone introduced him to a small company that was doing penetration testing.

6.

He felt like he’d finally found his people, his community of fellow “breakers”; even today, he says his team’s mantra is, “If you can build it, we can break it.”

7.

Says he’s still drawn to penetration testing all these years later because every day presents a new, interesting challenge.

8.

He draws similarities between the field of cybersecurity and the pursuit of career “success”: neither has a finish line where success is achieved because success is an ongoing practice.