The newbie night turned out to be an outstanding success, minus the part where the demo gods vented their spite at me early by making my computer not recognize the presentation monitor (but we had a demo in the end – thanks Marcin!)

The enthusiasm at such events is incredible, and just highlights the tremendous gap to be filled between the current generation of security professionals and the next. In the current market (Australia), there is nowhere for a newbie to realistically start from scratch, with everyone demanding years of experience, and very few organisations with a viable framework or appropriate headcount for mentoring new starters.

As promised, please find the slides attached: newbie night slides.

Given the success of this event and the level of interest, I am keen to run more events of this nature with different focusses (network security, forensics, cryptography etc). If you’re interested in helping out, please do let me know 🙂