IT and Cybersecurity Graduate Career Tips

 How about a little riddle?

What do Amazon, Jess Bezos, Lord of the Rings, rocket ships, and non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) have in common?

It’s not the easiest thing to pinpoint is it? Maybe we should spill the beans.

The surprise answer (for those of you who haven’t met him yet), is that it’s our IT & Cybersecurity program graduate Zach Haight that binds them all together!

How he figures into all of this, well, maybe you’d be better off hearing it from the source.

We were fortunate to be able to pin down Zach for an interview recently. You can hear all about his success and other exciting stories in the industry after he completed his program here at CAT in Kelowna.

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CAT: When did you graduate from the IT and Cybersecurity Program?

ZH: I graduated in 2015.

CAT: What has your employment journey looked like since graduating?

ZH: To begin with I contracted through Ci2i Solutions at Microsoft. Then I got a full time job working identity and access management in the IT department at Providence Healthcare. I then applied and was hired after an interview where Checkpoint Software Technologies flew me to Dallas, Texas for 12 nationwide jobs with 126 applicants.

I worked as an Associate Engineer for two years, and was promoted internally at Checkpoint through every rung of their engineering organization working directly with enterprise customers, and finished there as a Cloud Solutions Architect specializing in our technology integrations with public cloud service providers

I decided to spread my wings and moved to Palo Alto Networks, covering the Amazon account specifically, as well as all 27 of their (at the time) subsidiaries in the major accounts engineering organization.

I recently moved to Crowdstrike to expand my security breadth from firewall-focused security solutions to endpoint detection and response technologies as a Sr. Solutions Engineer.

 CAT: How did you get your first job?

ZH: A family friend gave me an opportunity to interview.

 I created cloud security architecture and assisted implementation for WeedMaps (a recreational marijuana store finder application).

In my last role at Palo Alto Network, I was also in early stages of discussions with a robotics arm at a large distributor about securing their IOT robotic devices. Ultimately I won’t be able to finish this project and I wish I could provide more detail but there is a textbook sized NDA (non-disclosure agreement) for that project.

I worked on security infrastructure design and implementation on both the mission control center and the rocket itself for both commercial and government contracted space flights at Blue Origin (Bezos’ space company).

– Zach Haight

 CAT: What is one of your proudest memories?

I did security and infrastructure design for the production and editing environments of the upcoming ‘Lord of the Rings’ TV series at Amazon Studios – as well as many secret Amazon productions that will be announced this year.”

– Zac Haight

CAT: What does a typical day look like in the network and cybersecurity administration field?

• Initial discussions with customer engineers around specific products within my companies technology stack.
• Creation of cloud-based demo environments for purpose of testing or demonstration in what I like to call “malware shootout”. This can sometimes be with known malicious content, content with an edited hash (zero day simulation) or newly emerging threats that we’ve seen hit some of our customers recently that we’re attempting to better understand.
• Conferences. In a non Covid world I attended blackhat/defcon yearly, as well as a number of local ISSA conferences and vendor conferences – to both learn for myself what emerging technologies look like in the security space, as well as educate others on what my company has to offer to assist them in their security journey.
• In-depth architecture deep dives, when a customer has decided on a specific direction they want to take their solution (ex. Deploying EC2 hosted next-gen firewall technology in AWS) – complex architecture based on use case becomes the next step. These sessions can span multiple days/sessions, ultimately dependent on the customer and of course the use case we’re trying to support.
• Discussions with Project Management about the direction of our solutions. We – as field engineers (customer facing architects) – are often asked by PM for feedback surrounding use cases we’re seeing in the “wild” so that the company as a whole can make effective changes to the solutions we offer. Sometimes we will go to them with a request, and then discuss why that particular feature or functionality, may or may not work within our software stack.

Without my courses with Rich Teer at College for Arts and Technology, I wouldn’t have had the slightest clue how to navigate a Bash shell.”

– Zach Haight

 CAT: Any last pieces of advice?

Find where you fit and you’ll go places.”

– Zach Haight

Are you passionate about cybersecurity, systems, and administration? Graduates from our IT & Cybersecurity diploma program like Zach have gone on to have fulfilling and exciting careers in the industry!

If you’re curious to know more, fill out our online inquiry form and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible!