Convocourses Podcast: In another country

I was in the Philippines from June to part of August. 

We talk about:

• Remote Working
• Countries I have worked in
• ITAR and the countries you cannot work in
• the new book about NIST 800-53 controls: https://securitycompliance.thinkific.com/courses/rmf-isso-controls-audiobook

 

Hey guys, this is Bruce, and welcome to concourses. I'm gonna be talking to you about my travels. I'm actually still abroad. I'm still in the Philippines and I actually going back home real soon. So you can expect regular podcasts like we've been doing before, but I wanted to go ahead and start doing these more often.

And I wanna start off by letting you guys know. I just released a few more products out there. So if you go to combo courses.com. I am writing a book about getting jobs in, um, in information technology and in cyber security and marketing those, uh, resumes that you put out, I'm gonna teach you how to create the resume from scratch and then how to promote the hell outta that resume.

So that is incoming. I'm doing that right now as we speak right in it. But if you want to get in early on this book, there it is right there. Uh, and that as soon as the. Is out I'll, I'll release it to you so you can actually pre-order it. Now I also am selling the audio version of the last two books that I wrote on my website, but you can also get 'em on audible as well.

And yeah. So speaking of that, The audible version of the NIST 800-53. If you prefer to use audible, if you have credits on audible, whatever, if you actually want to get a free trial on Audible, you can actually get this book for free on audible. So go ahead and check those things out and I'll be releasing a lot more and creating a lot more content for you guys.

But let's get into this one. I wanted to talk a little bit about this. And how you can do this. And just trying to tell you my experience. So you can get some idea of if, if, whether or not you actually wanna do this. I've first of all, I've been working remotely for, uh, past six years now, um, with different jobs.

Like I, this is my third, my last job was my third job that I did remotely. I worked for NASA remotely with a company, and then I, I worked, um, at Ball Aero. For a while remotely and, and then recently worked with Verizon remotely. And, um, there's a lot nowadays, there's a lot more remote jobs out there. So if you want the opportunity to actually do what I'm doing, it's much easier to do this now.

Um, my experience with RO work and remotely has been incredible. I've really enjoyed. Um, it's given me more time to spend with people who I love, um, I'm at home, so I can actually interact with them and figure out problems together with them and have more family time and things like that. Um, so those are the pros with it.

Some of the cons is if you have small kids, it's much harder to do remote work when you have small kids, or if you have somebody who's very needy it because it's hard to actually do your work with that. Um, and I've been in that situation where. Actually difficult. I had a remote job when my kids were really small and they, as soon as they see me, they wanna play, you know, so it wasn't the ideal, uh, situation when my kids were small, but now they're older, so they understand, Hey, dad's gotta work.

You know, and I have a, a place in my house where I can go and stuff like that. Um, another thing is that I have to actually have more discipline on stopping my work. Like you might think it. It is the opposite that you, it's hard to actually get to work for me. It's the opposite. It's hard to stop working.

I tend to just continuously work when I work from home and I gotta actually stop myself and have the discipline to say, okay, that's it. This project, the rest of this project and work till, wait till tomorrow. I'll I'll get to it then. Having that discipline is really important. Um, the self-discipline to actually not only do the work, but also stop yourself and have a schedule where you.

Force yourself to, um, not overwork. Um, so that that's some of the pros and cons of working remotely. Now, as far as what I'm doing now, what I'm doing right now is I'm actually in between jobs. I'm not working remotely, I'm working remotely on my own stuff, on my own business and I'm writing and stuff like that.

So you could include that as work remotely, but what we're talking about specifically is working for an employer. , you know, whether it's the government or private sector or whatever bank, whatever you're working for. Um, I'm not doing that right now. Right now. I'm abroad and I'm having a vacation and I do any work I'm doing is all, uh, business related.

But I, I have been here before in the Philippines and worked in other countries, Thailand and Vietnam and other countries worked actually working for an employer remote.  and there are some challenges to this. If, if this is something that you, you aspire to do, there are some challenges that you should know about.

Um, number one I would say is just because your employer is allowing you, it, it, it has it on the dockets to work remotely. Doesn't mean they allow you to work in another. And what I mean by that is there's laws. There's rules. One is called I a R, which will pro will restrict you from taking their laptop and their information outside of a country.

And in sometimes in some cases they have a policy where you can't even take the, their. Do equipment out of the state and they don't expect you to work outside of the state, but country is a lot more, um, happens a lot more often where they don't allow you to work outside of the state. I mean, I'm sorry, out of the country.

And, and in sometimes it's just, it's not that they don't want you to work outside of the country. It's more like there's certain countries they don't allow you to and you've gotta make sure whatever.  you you've gotta use strategy. Like if you're trying to live in say the Philippines and you know, you want to get a USA job or a job in Canada or wherever the case may be, you know, this is what you wanna do.

You have to think about it. Um, will this job allow me to work in another country? Okay. What countries can I work in the way that I've done it? Is whenever I get into a company, right? I'm I'm looking at their rules. I'm looking at what are their rules for remote work? Do they even allow, is it flex time where they want you to come in?

Once a week or something, is there travel? Is there, I'm looking at all the avenues of what I can do and what kind of information that we're gonna be processing. Cause that's another important feature when you're first looking at a remote job, uh, because if they're doing classified or any kind of super sensitive information, uh, more than likely it's, you're not gonna even be able to leave the, the state or the area.

Uh, and you have to, it'll be flex work, meaning you'll work from home, but then they want you to come in the office. If you're doing some kind of sensitive, really, really sensitive information. So that's one thing. Another thing I'll look at is, is the environment. Um, some organizations, especially private organizations are a little bit more, um, open about remote work.

They'll actually have like the last place I worked. We had people working in Japan. Like we had one guy working in Japan, doing work on for our clients and stuff like that. And we had another person who was working overseas in south America.  uh, who we had clients in south America. We had clients, we had people in Europe doing work with those clients.

We had people in Australia, we had people all over the world doing it. So the job lended itself to working internationally, cuz we had people who were actually working internationally. So that was that. Wasn't another thing I look at, like what's the environment. A lot of, uh, government jobs. They're very stable.

They allow remote work, but they're usually like flex jobs. They want you to still come in and stuff like that once a week or something. And then they have like a little bit of travel. So you gotta watch that private companies a little bit more flexible. So you wanna look at the environment. . Um, so those are some of the things that I, that I normally look at when I'm trying to think about strategy of what do I want, what country do I want to live in, will this organization that I'm applying for allow that those are the things you gotta now, once you get in, let's say you get a remote job, you're there.

Um, it's a great job. They're paying you. Good. All that kind of stuff. Now you're like, Hmm, can I travel? Uh, Venezuela Brazil, wherever Cambodia, wherever it is. Can I go there now? It's a matter of their policy right now. You know, that they're remote and all that stuff. You know that they're, it's okay. Maybe to travel, uh, internationally.

They haven't restricted you from that. Um, you've got your VPN, you got your protection on your system, all that kind of stuff. Now you're like, okay, the next question should be what other.  because some organizations will not allow you to go to certain countries and that's, it's tied to something called I a R and it's I don't remember what the actual acronym is.

It's and let me actually, let me look it up while I'm talking to you, you gotta look at the actual policies because that is super important. Um, you don't want to get caught, uh, traveling to some country you're not actually supposed to go to. And the, the company is obligated not to go to those countries.

Like legally you're not supposed to here. It's called it a international traffic in arms regulations, like arms you're thinking like guns and stuff like that. But, um, they're also talking about certain technologies that are wrapped into this, uh, into this. That the government has certain things that they do not allow com us companies to go to certain countries.

The reason why is because they, that that country might steal their, the intellectual property of that organization. A good example of this would be, um, companies like Lockheed Martin, who.  military, um, different military components. There's certain components that are proprietary and owned by the government.

That if it, you go to that other country and that country is spying or actively stealing anything on and off their network, uh, That's really bad encrypted or not they'll they can steal it and encrypted for later or something like that. Um, and that actually does happen quite a bit. Um, especially with the bigger countries, like China's doing that a lot.

And I, I don't doubt that us is doing that China and Russia is doing, they're doing all these major powers or doing that to one another. The point is though, from our perspective as workers, we just wanna make sure that we are. Gonna get caught, violating these laws and, and worse, uh, leak some information from clients and jeopardize our entire career based off some international, uh, incident, you know, like you don't want to be that guy it's just too risky.

So we talked a little bit about knowing the environment for that remote company, uh, knowing the policies is another thing that's huge and.  um, also making sure you don't violate any kind of laws that that company has. And that's normally tied into the policies. Now, one of the things that I did at the last place I worked at was I just asked, I said, Hey, are there any, what can you send me the laws of travel?

Like I wanna, I'm trying to travel. I didn't even go into details of that. I just say, Hey, can you send me the laws I read 'em myself. I'm not gonna ask permission and then get denied. Right? I'm just gonna.  and make sure I don't violate any major laws and then ask forgiveness. If they're like, Hey, you're you're in another time zone.

They won't even know I'm in another time zone, cuz I'm not gonna let them, I'm gonna be on the same. I'm not gonna violate any of their policies. I'm not gonna violate any kind of international laws are unit us national laws or anything like that. Um, so all of that stuff is good, but what I'll.  is make sure that I don't violate their, you know, I'm still on Eastern standard time or whatever the timeframe is.

So they don't even know I'm gone. Like I, I even travel sometimes I'll take, leave enough to travel to that other country. And then on Monday, Tuesday, when I'm supposed to go back to work, I'm bright and early working my nine to five. You. So that's some of the stuff I do. Um, I'm, I'm risk averse. Um, I manage my risk very effectively when I'm working for, for an organization.

I do not violate their rules. I do not. I just feel like the risk is too great for me. And that's kind of the mindset that you should have. I've not I've yet to be in trouble for traveling or anything. They don't even know I'm gone. I'm I'm doing everything I'm supposed to do now. Another. That you should think about when you're travel, when you're doing remote work and you're traveling, even if it's a staycation in another state, nevermind another country.

One of the things you should keep in mind is there's a few things. You, you need a place that's quiet. Uh, like right now I'm in this room here. It's, it's very quiet. It's very, um, there. I, I don't hear a lot of noise going on outside, but I've been in some places, especially in Southeast Asia where the noise level is super loud.

Like I was in Vietnam, the noise level was so loud. Like it, it, privacy was fine. I could just go inside of my room or whatever and, and shut the door, lock the door, whatever. Right. And had encryption, all that kind of stuff. But man, the noise pollution outside was seeping into the room. So you wanna have a place where you.

it's closed. You have privacy because especially if you're dealing with secret in not secret information, if you're dealing with, um, sensitive information from a client like vulnerabilities or IPS, you have to have privacy and you're talking on the phone, right?  I'll get to the encryption and all that kind of stuff in a second.

But I'm talking about privacy. Like you're on the phone talking to somebody, talking to your boss, talking to peers, talking to the client, the customer, whatever. And you might be talking about some sensitive information on the phone. So you want privacy, a room where it's not leaked the information not leaking out, but also that room gives you quiet where you can actually speak to them and, and have a conversation cuz conversation, you know, The communication is huge.

That's a big deal, uh, in cyber security. So you need a, a private space, the other thing, and that's pretty obvious, but the other thing is security. Um, whatever system you're on, you need to ha make sure you have firewalls in place, antivirus in place, and a VPN virtual private network either built in from the organization.

Preferably. So that it's their level of encryption and you don't have to worry about, uh, some private organization's encryption getting, getting compromised or something, which does happen by the way. Um, you you're using their VPN and, and all the information is protected on their system. And preferably it's encrypted when it's stored, not just when it's sent, like, normally we were thinking, oh, when I send this data on email or me.

It's encrypted end to end, whatever, blah, blah, blah. But also it needs to be stored, encrypted that way. If the laptop something happens, it gets stolen. God forbid, something like that happens, lost whatever. Even if they get the hard drive out, they pull the hard, the hard drive out the computer, and they're trying to get that information it's encrypted so that it's gonna be super hard for them to get that information.

So stored encrypt. Uh, data at rest encrypted data in transit encrypted. That's the level of security that you want if you're traveling, especially if you're traveling abroad. So we talked about privacy and being in a closed environment, but also the encrypt, the security of the actual system itself super important.

Um, those are some of the things you wanna really think. When, if you're talking about traveling abroad, because those things are super important. Another thing is if you do go out, um, you don't want to do your work in public areas. Like this seems obvious, but it's very tempting to be in these beautiful locations and do your work as a cybersecurity person, especially if you're signing, even if you're an administrator and you're signing into a server remotely.

Uh, you, you really gotta be mindful of your environment because you never know who's watching over your shoulder. You never know who's shoulder surfing. You never know who's, who's, uh, monitoring the traffic in, in the, in a public environment, cuz it's legal to do that, to monitor the traffic, any kind of data going, uh, in, on a wifi network and stuff.

Don't do that stuff in public at all. Forget about that. Don't do. So that's just some of the stuff I wanted to talk to you guys about. I mean, other than that, I could tell you about how my trip is going. Right, right now, let me see if I can set up some pictures and stuff. I could sh that I had set up here to show you guys of my trip here and how it's gone.

It's it's been going pretty good. I'm actually already in the works of doing, of getting back into work. Um, I've been doing some interviews here, and this is me, um, uh, with my partner here, we're just walking in this place called, uh, what is it called? Azure. I'm that's where I'm at right now. This is what you're seeing.

It's called Azure, um, Azure residence. It's got like a, a manmade beach area in a like five, three or four pools and, and, uh, it's right by a mall and stuff. It's just a. You know, this job in cybersecurity is very stressful. So right now I'm in between jobs in between work. And, um, I just decided to take some time before myself, before I go back to another job.

Um, one of the things that a lot of people don't talk about.  um, they talk about how great it is to be in cyber security and they talk about, you know, but it, it, it's a very, it's a stressful job, especially if you're taking on. Um, if you're taking on very, if you're taking on a high level job, there's a reason why it's high level.

Right. Um, I was doing consulting for about three years and, um, it, it was, it was pretty stressful. Um,  on top of that. I had some personal issues and you know, the show must go on. So I was doing, dealing my own personal issues and dealing with work and I have a side hustles and stuff. It just got too much.

And I decided to, to quit now, the job, they offered me a sabbatical. It's really hard to. High level, cyber security people. So they were trying to keep me, and I said, you know, I don't know if I return because I, this there's a lot of travel here. You know, there's a lot of travel and I don't know that my issues are gonna be resolved and I, it's not compatible with, with my new life situation.

So I told him. Opt it out. And they said, well, if you ever wanna come back, you know, just to let us know. And I said, you know, I, I told me, well, thank you. I appreciate the offering. But in my mind, I'm like, I don't think I'll be back because there's too much travel and stuff. I'm, I'm hoping that me telling you guys my situation maybe will help you, you know, and whatever endeavors you have, whatever you decide to do with your, with your life and your situation and stuff like that.

So you have an idea of how this stuff.  uh, one of the great things about, about the position I've put myself in by marketing myself and continuously growing in this field is that I is that I, um, I always have job opportunities, so I I'm, I feel okay with this situation that I'm in right now, I was. Save up some, some cash and, um, and, um, I'm not worried about getting a job.

I, I, I know I can get one, so I'm not, I'm not stressed out right now. You know, I'm, I'm on my, my third or fourth interview and, um, and I'm okay because I have so many options and it's a, it is a great feeling to know. I have enough options to where, to where I, you know, I know I'm gonna get a job is just a matter of, of time.

And, and there's nothing for me to stress about. And that's just because I, I have, I've built up certain. I have certain certifications. I position myself with my experience. I'll have my resume constantly being marketed it's out there. So I have people contacting me on Monday through Friday, I'm doing interviews, doing screen.

And stuff like that. So that's kind of where I'm at. That's what I'm doing here. I got about four or five more days left, and then I'm going back, going back to, um, let me see if I could find another video for, for those people who are watching this video. Um, yeah, I'm going back to go back to work here real soon.

Um, am I excited about it? I've been doing this for 20 years. You know, my excitement for. For this is, is not what it used to be. You know what I mean? Like it would take a lot for me to be excited about a new position at this point in my career. Um, maybe I'll find something that I'm excited about. There's been a couple that I'm like, Hmm, this seems interesting.

There's been a couple, you know, that I'm like, I hope I get this job. And so I, yeah, there's, it depends on the job, but there's a couple positions. I'm like, oh man, I don't know if I want this. That happens from time to time. I know I can do it. I know I'm qualified for this job, but I'm, I'm like, damn, I don't know if I want this.

I don't know if I want it. So, uh, there's about three companies right now that I'm in the works that I might, that, um, that I might get one of, either one of these positions right here that.  that I might get. I, I don't know yet, you know, but they're all risk management framework type positions. I've decided to get back into that.

I had a few options. I could probably go into either seeing technology or I can go into cyber security, uh, analyst work again, which was fun, but I kind of, kind of want to get back into my roots was just information system, security officer work. So that's kind of what I'm where I'm at right now and what I'm doing.

and, um, I should have a job I'm expecting to have something lined up by, by the time I, uh, get home, I should have something lined up. So probably when within another week I'll have something, um, something that I can do. But, like I said, I'm not even if it, if I can't get one within the next, I'm trying to find another video here while we're talking, even if I can't find another video within the next.

Um, so another video , even if I can't find another job within the next, um, Couple few weeks. I'll be, I'll be okay. You know? So the way I position myself, I'm, I'll be fine. Right. My me and my family will be fine. The, the one thing that, that really hit me hard is that seems have gotten much, much worse, has been the medical.

I, I don't have good medical insurance. So my insurance at my last job was really, really good. And now I'm like having to just. Use this second hand individual insurance that barely covers anything. And I am spending probably a, a, a cool $1,500 a month pull with everything and I have insurance. It's ridiculous.

I had no idea how broken this system is in the us. It's it's very broken. It's so bad that me coming here spending all the money. I. And getting medical insurance here getting medical coverage. And like my, I check in my eyes check and stuff. It's cheaper than me doing anything in the us. Um, it, it, it's, it's just sad.

Like what the state of the us is, um, situation is, is actually is it's quite, um, alarming how bad it is and, and there's no intention. There's no intention to do anything about it.  so yeah, insurance is, is it's it's, it's a disaster, man. If there's anything that's driving me to get this job faster, it's that?

Because the I've got two kids and you know, they're in and out of, in and out of medical, you know how Calvin kids is. I don't know if you know, if you have kids, you know, I'm talking about it, stuff happens. So they're in and out of getting treat, getting checked out and stuff like that. So, and it's not cheap at all.

So, yeah, that's what I'm doing. Just kind of giving you guys an update on what's going on with me. Um, I'm doing right. Um, still helping as many people as I can, as far as getting work and stuff. Um, I'm gonna end this one here real soon. I'm gonna put out much more information on, on podcasts, much more podcasts.

I just have to set up the right site for it. I think maybe if I put 'em on the site that my, my normal blog site, maybe, I don't know. We'll figure it out. Thanks. Thanks for watching guys. Thanks for listening. I appreciate everybody. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please hit me up on YouTube.

Uh, comment, email me, whatever there are topics we can always cover, but I will catch you guys on the next one.