How to become a penetration tester | Guest Dr. Wesley McGrew

It’s been a while since we’ve talked penetration testing and offense-oriented network security on the show, and I know some of you have been asking for it, so today’s your lucky day!

On the show we have Dr. Wesley McGrew, the director of Cyber Operations for HORNE Cyber. We’re going to talk about going on the offense as a good defense, the current state of pentesting and the raw work of reverse engineering malicious software and vulnerability testing. If you’re looking for the type of job that gets you out on the cybersecurity battlefield and fighting the bad guys, you’re going to want to give this episode your undivided attention!

Wesley McGrew is the author of penetration testing and forensic tools used by many practitioners. He is a frequent presenter at DEF CON and Black Hat USA. At the National Forensics Training Center, he provided digital forensics training to law enforcement and wounded veterans. As an adjunct professor he designed a course he teaches on reverse engineering to students at Mississippi State University, using real-world, high-profile malware samples. This effort was undertaken as part of earning National Security Agency CAE Cyber Ops certification for the university. He has presented his work on critical infrastructure security to the DHS joint working group on industrial control systems. Wesley earned his Ph.D. in computer science at Mississippi State University for his research in vulnerability analysis of SCADA HMI systems used in national critical infrastructure. He served as a research professor in MSU’s Department of Computer Science & Engineering and Distributed Analytics and Security Institute.

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