Security Professional

Joe Thompson

I'm a security professional working on building a career that I find genuinely meaningful. Earlier this year I passed the Hack The Box CPTS exam — 14 out of 14 flags — and I hold the CISSP along with a range of certifications that reflect the depth of knowledge I've built across the field. I'm always looking for new opportunities to learn while keeping up with the projects that push my understanding — Hack The Box, building this site, and documenting the work as I go. I learn by building things.

My path here wasn't the typical one. I wasn't the CS major who went straight into IT out of school. I spent the better part of fifteen years working in film and television — editing features and producing broadcast series at a level I'm genuinely proud of. What eventually pulled me away wasn't a lack of love for the craft. It was the reality of a freelance career: the constant hustle to line up the next job, the lifestyle that fits your twenties perfectly and starts to feel unsustainable once your priorities shift. I wanted work that was building toward something, and I wanted some stability while building it.

What that career gave me, I still use every day. Working in large, chaotic environments where the power dynamics are extreme and communication is everything teaches you things no classroom or course will. I learned how to stay calm when everything around you is loud, how to work alongside anyone regardless of where they sit in a hierarchy, and how to manage upward when the situation calls for it. As a story producer and editor, the actual job was finding a coherent story buried in hundreds of hours of raw footage — sifting through the noise to find the threads that connect. That skill has a different name in security work, but it's the same muscle.

I share my work here as I grow and continue to learn. The people whose content helped me when I was starting out made this field feel approachable when it could have felt overwhelming, and if something here does that for someone else, that's worth the effort. If I'm honest about where I want to end up — I'd love to one day work alongside the people whose work I've been learning from. That feels like a goal worth naming out loud.