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PVcase has launched PVcase Roof Mount, a tool for commercial and industrial rooftop solar installations. Land shortage, climate change, and relatively easy implementation make rooftop solar one of ...

PVcase launches PVcase Roof Mount for commercial and industrial solar rooftop installations

PVcase has just launched PVcase Roof Mount, a cutting-edge tool for commercial and industrial rooftop solar installations.

PVcase, a Lithuanian PV software-as-a-service company, has launched a new plugin for design and engineering tool AutoCAD, enabling users to model commercial and industrial rooftop solar systems.

PVcase introduces AutoCAD tool for rooftop solar systems

PVcase has introduced a new AutoCAD tool for rooftop PV systems, featuring 3D building preparation, layout generation, shading calculation, and electrical design capabilities. Philippine ...

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Last fall, I interviewed six women and non-males who have exciting careers in . Those articles were all published in . cybersecurity Tripwire’s State of Security blog Ideally, all people in our field, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, age, nationality, and sexual orientation, would simply be regarded as “people who work in information .” Unfortunately, we work in a male dominated field, and sometimes dealing with sexism affects our careers. security I think it’s especially important to encourage more women and transgender people to consider careers in cybersecurity. So my interview series shines a spotlight on some of the brightest minds in our field — who just so happen to not be male. My series was very well received. So, as spring arrived I decided to continue it. As of this writing, most of those new interviews have been done already and their corresponding articles have been sent to my editor at Tripwire. You can look forward to them being published on in the coming weeks, probably starting in April. Tripwire’s blog Until then, I’ve decided to republish here. Please enjoy them! my interview series from last fall And if you can spare a few bucks, please consider contributing to . I don’t get paid for my Medium published articles, and the trickle of money here and there that I receive from helps keep me going. Thank you! my Patreon my generous patrons There’s also a way you can help me that won’t cost you any money at all. Click on the little green heart if you like my article, it’ll help with my visibility. Most appreciated! Women in information security, being a minority, deserve a spotlight. Previously, I’ve interviewed , a Scottish security analyst who is currently working in the United States, and , a woman who went from library sciences to infosec, who’s now a host of the PVCSec podcast, and who runs her own infosec business. Tiberius Hefflin Tracy Maleeff Recent years have brought greater visibility to people who don’t completely identify with binary genders, male or female. I think openly nonbinary people are even less visible in our field than binary women are. Isly identifies as a nonbinary femme, and she works as a penetration tester for the defense industry. : Hi, Isly! How would you describe your job and title? Kim Crawley I’m a penetration tester for the civil department of a defense contractor. Isly: That sounds pretty intense! KC: We’re all pretty laid back. I: My (now former) husband did pentesting for the Canadian Forces over a decade ago. Do you have any favourite pentesting suites? KC: If it wasn’t civil and was government, I’d be less hesitant to work there, for sure. We have some folks who are still active reservists. I: Suites? Hmm. Depends on the engagement, really. I just did an OSINT engagement, and we made use of Maltego. I mostly stick to Kali and sometimes use Metasploit. I’ve stuck myself with Linux. Are there a lot of plugins for that? Most of my familiarity is with OpenVAS. KC: Well, we don’t do scanning, really. We have another team for that. Mostly we do black box and fuzzing and then follow-up with Nessus for anything we may have missed. Some of us specialize in (ICS)/SCADA, so they have their own tools. We’re learning Dradis next week, in fact. I: industrial control systems I think the earliest versions of Kali were incomplete, package- and feature-wise. But the latest releases are much improved. KC: Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard. It’s quite useful. I: Have you done a lot of SCADA work? What do you think of some people speculating about SCADA IoT? I think SCADA systems should only connect to private internal networks, anyway. KC: I haven’t done any, but my mentors and colleagues at work have, and I’m sure I will within the next year. If they’re considering SCADA-based IoT, that makes me nervous. They’re just so uniquely vulnerable, and when one domino topples in an ICS layout, they all do. I: Those of us with knowledge of infosec are concerned, but the suits often won’t listen. KC: Also, a lot of people utilizing SCADA have everything on a lateral network connecting to it. That’s very problematic. I: Have you seen utilities experience downtime due to that? KC: I personally haven’t, but some of my friends have surrounding the need for engagements over the last few years. They’re people I work with, so I trust the source. I: It’s especially scary when it affects stuff like nuclear power and sanitizing water. KC: Yeah, those things are horrifying, I agree. It can be done safely, but it takes careful planning. I: So, how did you get into infosec? KC: I started out as a Linux sysadmin, and my company needed help with the abuse department. I kind of flourished there, then went into abuse department management. I: But then I enjoyed the technical guts of the work too much, so I moved into other fields in infosec. So, something must have gotten you into sysadmining in the first place. KC: I worked in a completely unrelated field for a decade. I moved and I wasn’t allowed to keep my job. I got laid off. After not having a job for seven months, I finally applied as tech support for the sysadmin job, so the lowest level. I: And it turns out I had a knack for it, moved up from lowest level to admin to tech management within five years. From a helpdesk background, I always thought was the lowest level of IT. I think sysadmining can be more stressful, but it generally pays better. KC: that Yeah, helpdesk, call centre, chats… it’s very low level. I’m glad my company then gave me the chance to earn my way into a sysadmin role. More complex problems with a bright side: fewer issues about billing and people yelling in my ear. I: Did your employer realize your gender identity? KC: Yes. There were fewer and fewer females the higher up I got into the admin department. I: Did you ever feel like you had to fight against sexism in IT? KC: I was the first non-male technical leader in the admin department, as a supervisor for admins, the company had ever had. So yeah, I did. I felt like I had to prove myself double. I worked extra hard. There were men in that role who didn’t pull their weight. I: Did you have a lot of private sector experience before you got into the public sector? KC: No, I had no private sector experience. I’ve had very few employers, as once I like somewhere, I tend to stick around. It’s kind of against what people do now, with changing jobs every year or two for greener grass. Now people expect to do that. I: I guess you’re kind of lucky that way. Aside from my long helpdesk gig, all of my infosec work has been contracting. KC: I’m a consultant, full-time, so luckily not contract, and a lot of the people I work with have been with the company for several years and enjoy it. It’s nice for family life. That can also let you travel. I: Okay. See, I was writing study material for CISSP and CEH programs and I had to self-teach. I learned those exams that way, and that’s backwards. KC: Same on self-teaching, the last job where I did some security sysadmin work was barely scratching the surface. And they didn’t wanna pay for anything but Security+, which is garbage compared to what’s out there. I: Do you think infosec employers are getting stingier like that? KC: I can’t really say. That employer wasn’t an infosec employer. They just needed some attention to security, so it wasn’t their primary focus. If you wanted the RHCSA/RHCE, they’d pay and give you a promotion. I: Here at this employer, they really do care. I got signed on with a ninety days paid OSCP lab because they recognize it’s a good certification. We all get one training or cert paid per year. They also pitch in for bigger security conferences. You should count your blessings. KC: I really do. One of my female friends on Twitter is required to speak at four conventions a year, but I don’t know about certs. I’m sure they also provide them, but they’re a huge company she works for. I: Do you think you’ve had a socially progressive influence? KC: Oh yes. That said, in all these years, I’ve been doing technical work. So there have been few females or non-males. I: That said, I have tattoos and some minor facial piercings and coloured hair. I leave the latter two visible but demure and wear long sleeves. I applied to about twenty things before I got the job I’m in now, and that was only because a friend who works there referred me. So yeah, it’s hard with how I am and how it is. You couldn’t just demonstrate that you could reverse engineer a piece of malware (that obviously isn’t Stuxnet?) KC: I don’t know how to reverse engineer! I applied as a SOC Analyst because I didn’t think I could do anything more complex after being just a sysadmin who read logs. But with this shop, I applied to a SOC Analyst position, and they felt I had the brain for pentesting, so here I am. I don’t have a lot of self-confidence at the end of the day. I: I think all that loganalysis can hurt your eyes if you don’t have a bunch of metrics monitors and log analysis software. But then, what if the log analysis software has a catastrophic bug? KC: I didn’t have the luxury of using software back at my old job. I got very used to using ‘less’ and ‘grep’ and ‘regex’ to pull what I found. I: Wow, you get extra respect from me. But back to the idea of women in infosec, do you think it’s detrimental to the field when 99% of us seem to be male? The lack of diversity? KC: Yes, but that can be spread to a large portion of the IT world. I know more femme and non-male developers than I do in infosec. I’m only one of maybe three non-males in a team of twenty-six, I think. The ratio was worse at my old job for admins. Even worse for tech support. Though there are of females in non-technical roles there, like sales and billing. I: way lots What would you say to a young girl who’s interested in an infosec career who might be reading this? KC: I’d quote Dual Core’s paraphrasing of his own rhymes, and say, “Find all the clues, hack all the things.” I: Make IoT Barbie say “Math is hard.” KC: not Ha, IoT Barbie! I forgot that existed. I: If you enjoyed my article, there are two ways that you can help me. First, you can click on the little green heart to recommend my article. Secondly, you can make a small donation to . Thank you! my Patreon

Women in Information Security: Isly

Last fall, I interviewed six women and non-males who have exciting careers in . Those articles were all published in . cybersecurity Tripwire’s State of Security blog Ideally, all people in our field, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, age, nationality, and sexual orientation, would simply be regarded as “people who work in information .” Unfortunately, we work in a male dominated field, and sometimes dealing with sexism affects our careers. security I think it’s especially important to encourage more women and transgender people to consider careers in cybersecurity. So my interview series shines a spotlight on some of the brightest minds in our field — who just so happen to not be male. My series was very well received. So, as spring arrived I decided to continue it. As of this writing, most of those new interviews have been done already and their corresponding articles have been sent to my editor at Tripwire. You can look forward to them being published on in the coming weeks, probably starting in April. Tripwire’s blog Until then, I’ve decided to republish here. Please enjoy them! my interview series from last fall And if you can spare a few bucks, please consider contributing to . I don’t get paid for my Medium published articles, and the trickle of money here and there that I receive from helps keep me going. Thank you! my Patreon my generous patrons There’s also a way you can help me that won’t cost you any money at all. Click on the little green heart if you like my article, it’ll help with my visibility. Most appreciated! Information security really needs female professionals. There aren’t a lot of us, but all the women in infosec I’ve met so far have been fascinating. In my first interview, I , a Security Assurance Analyst. spoke with Tiberius Hefflin The second woman I spoke to was Tracy Z. Maleeff, who is well known on Twitter as . @InfoSecSherpa How would you describe your current job and title? Kim Crawley: Technically, I am the Principal of Sherpa Intelligence LLC. I am an independent information professional providing research and social media management services to clients. I created the business to help my transition from the law firm library world into infosec. Tracy Maleeff: I have a vague memory about how you went from library sciences to infosec. KC: I joked recently on a podcast that all my past careers were just preparing me for infosec. I spent most of my twenties as a travel agent. I went back to school and earned three college diplomas in six years. TM: I set off on a librarian path. I worked in corporations and academia before landing in private law firms, where I stayed for about ten years. I have a Master of Library and Information Science degree, and I very much enjoy librarian work. It’s just that I feel like I can do more and found myself remembering how much I liked tech aspects of every job I’ve had. That led me about two years ago to start dipping a toe into the tech waters to see if that excitement was still there for me. I attended every tech meet-up in Philadelphia and beyond. I signed up for Girl Develop It classes and events. I was a sponge and tried to absorb everything. I pretty quickly realized that the programmer, developer, front-end tech world just wasn’t my cup of tea. I kept feeling myself drawn towards the tech articles about security and signed up for a Cybersecurity Fundamentals class. It had everything that I wanted and I felt that I truly had transferrable skills for this industry based on my past work and life experiences. Was there ever friction in your transition to IT due to sexism? KC: I don’t feel like I’m completely in IT or security yet, so I don’t know if I can answer that accurately or fairly. TM: I can tell you that I attended a WordPress conference last year, and that was my first experience being at a mostly male professional event. The librarian world is mostly female, so that was a big culture shock for me. I witnessed and experienced some terrible behavior at that WordPress conference that was eye opening. But I do have to truly say that thus far, my experience in security has been positive. Plenty of my male colleagues have been very helpful in educating me and encouraging me. I’m also being strategic and making sure that I am involved with the female-centric security groups and associations out there, so that I can meet other women to learn from their experiences, as well. That sounds like a good, balanced approach. How did you get the attention of those podcasters? KC: You mean PVCSec? TM: Exactly. KC: Through my involvement on Twitter, basically. I got to know Edgar Rojas via Twitter and his promotion of the Tactical Edge conference. I started doing some work with him on Tactical Edge, plus I think the PVCSec co-hosts interacted with me on Twitter. TM: One day, I was asked to be a guest on a podcast episode. Next thing I know, they asked me to be a co-host. I’ve also done some other guest podcast recordings, and I have to say that those all came out me being active on Twitter as and being a contributing member of the infosec community. @InfoSecSherpa That is some fortunate networking. KC: I don’t think everyone understands the power of social media when it comes to professional development and professional networking within an industry or professional community. TM: How has PVCSec benefitted you? KC: I do a lot of speaking engagements in the librarian world about professional networking, in person and online. TM: So far, I believe that PVCSec has benefited me through getting my name out there more. More Twitter followers, more LinkedIn views, plus more invitations to write and speak. I was surprised how many people knew who I was at Hacker Summer Camp in Las Vegas. Plus, I just learn a lot from my co-hosts. I learn more about infosec from my co-hosts, and that is a great experience! Has that overlapped with the infosec stuff? What have you learned so far? KC: Oh, how has my speaking engagements overlapped with infosec? I think I see a way that I can also do those same presentations to the infosec community in order to help them. Speaking engagements are a great way to meet people. I’ve learned better ways to educate non-tech types about infosec. I’ve learned some management philosophies and techniques. We had a podcast episode recently where each host gave book recommendations. It was fascinating to hear which books they selected and why and how that fits into infosec. TM: I’d say the biggest thing I’ve learned from the podcast is how there are many different skills, not just tech, that go into being a good infosec professional. You need communication skills, empathy, problem-solving, time management, organization, and more. It’s not just a straight-up tech job, and that’s also what drew me to it. Do you think the need for soft skills is a benefit of women in infosec? KC: I think soft skills are things that everyone in infosec needs to have. I don’t see that as gender-specific. Not all women have good soft skills. It’s an everybody skill! TM: So, you think ability in soft skills is pretty gender-balanced. KC: I don’t think it’s fair to put a gender on soft skills. Sometimes they are abilities that people have naturally, like empathy and communication. But, the bottom line, in my opinion, that they are skills that everyone can learn. Some may be better at them than others, but they can be learned. That’s how I teach people about professional networking. It’s a skill that can be learned, some may just have to work harder or adapt differently to it. TM: What would you say to a little girl who’s interested in computing, assuming she was taught that computer tech is “for boys”? KC: Question authority. In my very first computer science class in middle school, the teacher was female. I didn’t realize at the time how big of a deal that was. So, I never thought that a woman teach computers or be in comp sci. Role models are very important. Women need to be visible to young girls to show them what’s possible. TM: couldn’t I think actions and visibility have more of an impact than words. I was (and still am) pretty terrible at math. I had my own personal hangups about doing more in comp sci. It had nothing to do with me being female. It had to do with me struggling with math. However, there was a time in college when being one of the only females online and in the computer lab did create some uncomfortable moments that may have impacted me moving away from computers. But, in my earlier years, gender wasn’t a factor. The digital divide concerns me and it’s not just a gender issue. I’m concerned about the lack of POC in tech, and that’s something we should all care about. Tech needs to be more diverse. Diversity of thought helps to solve problems. I agree completely. Do you think some of the lack of diversity in infosec comes from the top? Like when Silicon Valley talks about candidates being a “culture fit?” KC: I feel like I don’t know enough about Silicon Valley culture to make an educated statement about this. I feel like companies could do more to help with creating a more diverse tech workforce. However, and this came up at a BlackHat luncheon, do you want to be hired just to be trotted out by the company to show how diverse they are? TM: I can understand that. So, what do you think is the biggest problem in infosec at the moment? KC: Lack of respect and value. It feels like people treat security as a nuisance and inconvenience. Companies are interested in protecting themselves but then give more responsibility to already overworked IT people or don’t fully support the message of security awareness. A culture of to be embraced by a company, but from stories that I hear and read, it feels like they want to be protected just as long as it doesn’t interfere with anything they do. TM: security needs I think often the CEO, and especially the CFO, messes with the CTO. KC: So, that leaves infosec people feeling like they are constantly herding cats and being Sisyphus in regards to security matters. Honestly, it’s not much different than how a library feels within an organization. Another reason why I feel like I fit in. TM: I heard that often infosec gets cut because the shareholders don’t think we generate profit. Sometimes, even a super expensive POS system attack won’t change their minds. KC: Same thing with libraries. They are overhead. But yet, when people need research or materials, they need the library. I know all about proving value within an organization. TM: You’re practical, then? KC: I like to think so. I also think that I see big picture things better than some. I like to think a few steps ahead. I had a coworker once who used to implement change without thinking through scenarios, and it used to drive me nuts. I think I work well as a hub with a lot of spokes. TM: Do you have any last words about women in infosec? KC: Don’t be afraid to be a trailblazer. Look to persons of any gender identity and POC for advice and feedback. Diversity strengthens us all. Pay it forward and help others by welcoming them into infosec and giving your own tips or wisdom. I like that there are some all-female infosec groups, but make sure that your professional network is inclusive of everyone in the industry. Make your voice heard and be a beacon for others. TM: Tracy Z. Maleeff is one of PVCSec’s hosts. Check out . Tracy also blogs at PVCSec.com sherpaintel.com. If you enjoyed my article, there are two ways that you can help me. First, you can click on the little green heart to recommend my article. Secondly, you can make a small donation to . Thank you! my Patreon

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