Chapter 2:
White Hat
To The Rescue
2003 Convocation Address:
The School of Computing and Information Management Sheridan College
Thank you for that gracious introduction, Good evening ladies and gentleman,
I am honored that the School of Computing and Information Management
of Sheridan College has invited me to present your Convocation Address:
And lucky me Apparently I am the one person standing between you and
the real celebration. So I will try to keep this brief and make it meaningful.
When I asked the convocation organizers what the graduates and their
families would like to hear they suggested discussing my professional
experience and wisdom over the years, well this made me feel a bit like
Yoda! However here we go….
My name is Rosaleen Citron I am proud to be the Chief Executive Officer
for WhiteHat Inc. An Information Technology Security Provider, an ITSP
(one of many acronyms you will have to learn over the years) The WhiteHat
Mandate is to arm our clients to go into cyber battle.
In the WhiteHat world things move as fast as the Internet and it never
stops. It’s a 24/7 lifestyle. Being in IT today is an exciting
and growing opportunity that I love, in fact it can be classified as
pure excitement punctuated by moments of stark raving terror. Get ready
for your lives to go into hyper speed. Being in the IT field in this
time…. what a rush!
Let me ask you, Do you ever have slightly technical discussions with
your family or friends that are not in IT and they look at you like
you have a horn sticking out of your head, then you are classified as
a “computer geek” well add security as a specialization
on top of this and, try to explain what we do to the general public,
well I think you get what I mean. Part of my job is to take what our
IT security community says and translate to plain English, so I am also
known as the “universal geek speak translator” WhiteHat
receives a tremendous amount of “industry expert” media
in TV, Radio and Print. In fact we have been in the trade related publications
on a regular basis for well over a year. Because of what I do for a
living I get to speak to a lot of groups, but this address is really
cool because I am speaking to people who Get it!
To put this in perspective, think about this, I am presenting the key
note address at the Canadian National Quality & healthy workplace
Awards, that’s pretty hard in our industry where software Quality
assurance is handled by hackers; they do most of the hard testing in
the wild. And our idea of health is a fridge full of coke & mountain
dew, a 7 way cappuccino machine and cupboards full of Twinkies and chocolate.
What can I say!
Story of WhiteHat – I am sure some of you are thinking, “What
is the significance of the name WhiteHat?” and believe me that’s
normal, although this group may have a pretty good idea, because the
name is specific to our industry it is not always apparent to the rest
of the world what our name actually represents. To put it into perspective
for the whole audience It’s not too different from the cowboy
movies you may have watched as a child, you knew if the cowboy in the
scene were wearing a black hat he was the bad guy. If they wore a white
hat like the lone ranger they were the good guy. Now fast forward from
childhood into the Cyberspace world we now live in and just like the
cowboy movies the WhiteHat’s are the “Cyberspace Good guys”.
And the Black hat hackers in our industry are the proverbial bad guys.
In fact At the Roundup Of Cyberspace Cowboys in Pittsburg this past
weekend this was the quote “Black hats are the people that do
the bad stuff,' "White hats either use their knowledge to thwart
the black hats or use it for good." There is a shift in this, if
you have seen the Matrix movies you will find that the lead characters
where a lot of black, even though they are the good guys now, they were
originally hackers so I guess now they are classified as gray hats.
On a personal note my dogs are named Neo and Morpheus.
FYI the word hacker also comes from many years ago when a writer was
called a hack, now computer code writers are classified as hackers;
however the connotation is black hat for a bad hacker, one that is in
it for profit or malicious reasons and will commit a cyber crime to
get what they want. In our world what is illegal off-line is also illegal
online. You will come to understand this no matter what area of IT you
work in the Black hats will be in the background, so remember call in
the good guys (WhiteHat) when you need help to defend your IT enterprise.
There are as many classifications in IT today as there are in a medical
degree, if not more. And as a doctor would, you should know everything
about something and something about everything as you all face challenges
today with the IT job market but think about this, I opened WhiteHat
right after the dot gone period in 2001, the market was tanking, businesses
stopped spending and jobs started to disappear. What was I thinking?
and now to make matters worse, the 3 horseman of the apocalypse showed
up!
We have had 9/11
The Iraq War
SARS and now Mad Cow disease
Business has gotten much more difficult; however I have a motto, last
man or in my case woman standing. Or in WhiteHat’s case Never
give up Never surrender. I have made mistakes over the years but I have
learned from those mistakes and when I see someone else about to make
a similar mistake I am able to warn them in advance, we have another
saying don’t reinvent the wheel.
When I first started in the IT business we had Mainframes and midrange
machines, all desktops were in a master/slave configuration and used
3270 and 5250 protocols for communication. In fact I go back so far
that our phone number is 800 -561-3270. Distributed computing in LAN’s
and WAN’s did not come into their own until the mid to late 80’s.
Now a mainframe is the biggest/coolest peripheral device hanging off
a PC! Home PC’s were just coming out and now the average is 2.2
computers per household in Canada. Actually it’s a lot more than
that because we don’t own an appliance, car, stereo, clock or
other goods that doesn’t have a computer chip in it. The average
house hold has at least 30 microprocessors = Think about it how many
cell phones, PDA’s, Digital cameras and other devices are attached
to the audience tonight. In fact I know one of my executive team members
in attendance tonight has at least 5 of them with her.
Working with the Internet is amazing. There are no boarders (this is
causing all of the governments heartburn, how can you charge for taxes
if the purchases are made outside of your jurisdiction?) everyone is
equal, what a concept! There are no boundaries. If you have an idea
and understand how to implement it you can do it.
Set goals for yourselves. If you have not already done this sit down
with some quite time, (at least two days after your graduation parties
you will need time to recover) and think of yourself as a hallmark card
for happiness, health wealth and prosperity, think of all the things
you want in your life. Don’t be shy ….Set 1-3-5-10 and 20
year goals. In fact there was a study done by Harvard school of business
where one half of the class were asked to set down their goals on paper
and review them from time to time and the other half didn’t. After
5 years they went back and found that of the half that had set their
goals 90% of them had either reached their 5 year goals or exceeded
them 5% were almost on track the other 5% we believe were in a bar.
Of the half that did not state their goals 28% were unemployed, and
the rest seemed to be stuck in jobs they didn’t like. I can tell
you from experience it works. I set my goals when I was in my early
30’s. Some of the things I put down sounded out of reach at the
time but remember these are goals. Of my 3-5 and 10 year goals not only
did I meet them but I exceeded them, in fact I have only a few left
to achieve how wonderful for me.
To give you an example, one of my 3 year goals was to meet Michael Schumacher
Formula 1 World racing Champion, I am a huge formula 1 fan, Well a few
months after I set my goal my husbands company acquired a paddock suite
at the Montreal Grand Prix this is a fully catered suite that sits over
the Pit lane and has full access to the pits and teams and I was invited,
not only did I meet M. Schumacher at the track, along with almost all
of the other drivers, but it turned out he was staying in the same hotel
as we were, he got stuck in the elevator with me. Yes I got the autograph!
As if this wasn’t enough the icing on the cake that weekend was
The Montreal Canadians had just won the Stanley cup and the team and
the cup were also invited to the Grand Prix and they were in the next
paddock suite to ours, I had an opportunity to meet the players and
got to hold the cup…. it was a great weekend and the start of
a long tradition.
One of my other goals was to run my own technology company that was
in my 5 year plan, sound aggressive? Not at all, within 2 years I was
sitting at my desk at Bell Canada contemplating the business market
which by the way looked a lot like the one we are in now, and where
to direct our new year business plan when opportunity came knocking,
and if I can give you a piece of advice when opportunity comes knocking
don’t walk to open the door run to the door and open it wide.
In my case I opened the door wide grabbed opportunity by the shoulders
and kissed it full on the mouth. I had been informed that the division
of Bell Canada that I worked for was in the middle of “rightsizing,
downsizing and going back to core competency. However In their speed
to move back to “core competency” one thing they overlooked
was some of the work that our division did, who would continue to support
Bell with the products and services we provided, so I approached them
with the concept of taking the company out of Bell and doing it myself.
This could be a win/win situation if it worked. What was I giving up?
A regular income, benefits, real vacations, a support system and corporate
deep pockets. In the end none of this mattered, I truly believed that
we could make a go of the business and on April 3 1993 we launched the
progenitor of WhiteHat and I was running my first high tech company.
And we managed even in a challenging economy to grow.
The Economy is like a living breathing creature, it expands and contracts,
every 5 years or so it takes a deep breath, it is actually a cycle,
in fact we are going through one of those contractions right now. However
remember this, every time we come out of one of these cycles technology
is the first thing to take off. I seem to have a nack for opening businesses
in a down cycle, building it up and positioning ourselves for the up
cycle. Most analysts would tell you that is the worst thing you can
do.
After a few years we moved heavily into the IT security niche, we discovered
that distributed computing brought with it a lot of issues. It was easy
to secure a mainframe, just use a pair of tin snips on the communications
lines and no one can get to it. However the world moved to Distributed
Computing environments and now all areas had to be secured. We got really
good at this we wanted to change the look and feel of our company, how
do you do this?, well you can get funding and go out and create a new
model, or you could merge or be acquired. We took the path of least
resistance which was being acquired during the .com boom which as most
of you know went dot gone. A lot of people got drawn into the WOW factor
of a heavily funded public company that on the outside looked bulletproof.
Most people might have watched the company and millions of dollars go
down the drain and just give up. Not me, I have goals that I must reach
so taking what money I had left I poured it into my new company. However
out of each disaster in our lives we learn something and sometimes fate
takes a hand, during the acquisition of my company I had an opportunity
to meet some of the most talented people. Once I was up and running
I had the opportunity to go back and convince those people to join me
in my WhiteHat adventure. Today they are my business partners. And I
am incredibly proud of them and our business. We have just entered our
third year and even in this economy our second year grew by 100% not
just in revenues but staff as well not a small feat. To add to this
we were actually profitable.
Life keeps throwing challenges at us, everyone
told us we were insane to try to open and run a business like this with
everything going on in the world and yes we lost money because of 9/11
everyone went out and bought physical security, SARS has been particularly
painful to our bottom line, none of our US students would come for training
and in the first month of the outbreak we lost close to $100,000 of
our security education revenues. However on the flip side we had trade
shows and conferences we were working with our US partners who chickened
out of staffing their expensive booths, so in one show we ended up running
their booths for them and because of this we got all of the leads. By
the way it has occurred to me that Canadians are a hardy lot, think
about this, we are all in this room hopefully with no fear of contracting
anything, but some pretty hardened Rockers who have ingested every drug
and alchol known to mankind, they abused themselves indiscriminately
over the years but ran away from Toronto. DUH! To top this off Canada
has just liberalized the Marajuana laws.
Pick your hero’s or role models wisely
and try to emulate them. One of the people I admire for his candor is
Colin Powell, he once said you can’t be a responsible leader without
pissing people off, and believe me when I tell you I am very responsible……!
Just ask my team.
One further piece of advice when you pick you
life mate, soul mate, or business partner make sure that you are ready
to emotionally support each other in your life choices. I am always
amazed at how many couples and business partners I meet who have completely
different standards and goals from each other. If this happens you will
run into serious challenges and difficulties within the relationship.
If what you want is a quiet life in a rural community and your life
partner wants to live in an urban centre and party all the time you
will have issues Make sure that your end results are similar then you
can work through the smaller issues. I have been blessed with an incredible
marriage and life style, and even though my husband and I have very
different personalities our end goals are similar. Or at least the location
is, what each of us will be doing is different, but we want to do them
together, and because of the power of computers we will. The one thing
we learned over the years nothing is impossible so I support him in
his endeavors and he has always supported me. It is not that you can’t
do it alone, but it is so much more satisfying to share the successes
with the people you love and to have them tell you it will be ok when
you need that too.
What you hear in the media about the economy
is an indication of the challenges to our industry. Details are very
important, how you do things in your life and work, in the IT field
Details are everything if you are writing code and leave holes in it
I guarantee you someone will find it and use it. Employers are looking
for the best these days, be willing to take a little less to get the
job you want because in a year or so the markets will come back and
you will be employed and ready to move up. Someone who held out will
be out in the cold. In the security world if you are out of it for more
than 90-120 days the world has changed and you have lost your edge.
People who stay at the top of their game will always come out ahead.
Your brain is at its most active as you leave
college or university. Regardless of what area of IT you move into,
Keep you brain at this level by learning continually. The incredible
Speed at which this business runs….. The best of our people never
stop learning, there is always something new in technology. it is our
goal for our staff for their career development and our expertise with
our clients to maintain as many certifications as possible, which in
turn generates more revenue for the corporation but much higher salaries
and bonuses for the engineer.
Each of you has a specific talent or talents,
let yourself be drawn to it, it will ultimately make you happier and
less stressed throughout your life. If your technical talents lie in
the security area think about being a hero, join the military, or law
enforcement be a part of the ultimate solution, Another reason to do
this, the consultants that we use are x military, NSA, RCMP, CIA, FBI,
etc. and their average incomes in the commercial sector are between
$150 - $250,000 US per year. It took time and effort for them to get
there but they all tell me it was well worth it. These people are all
heroes in their own right and are revered in our circle.
I have had an incredible opportunity to look
back in time through my own experiences and through the eyes of my team.
Every one of them has their own story and their own lessons learned
along the way that have made them the incredible people and brilliant
team that they are. How very fortunate for my company.
So here are 9 things to remember as you move through
your life.
I wish for each of you that your career and
ultimate life pursuits will be as enriching, exciting and as satisfying
as mine. Even more important Congratulations to all of you be proud
of who you are and what you have accomplished, this is just the start.
Rosaleen Citron’s tips for success:
1. Set your goals and live by them – Follow through in everything.
2. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, knowledge is learning what
not to do.
3. Run don’t walk when opportunity knocks, whether it is in your
career or with your potential life mate.
4. Be a team player even if you are a leader – In this market
lone wolves take time and energy and companies don’t have the
resources. Get really good at what you do and work with others to help
them; it will go a long way in the near future.
5. Know something about everything and everything about something.
6. Get as many certifications as you can. These are important to your
future employers and can provide a huge boost to your self esteem.
7. Do sweat the details. They’re important.
8. Keep your options open: We live in an intimate global economy. Technology
brings people together in seconds. Your dream job could be in Canada,
the UK, South America, Australia, anywhere. Stay open to relocation
as a potentially enriching opportunity.
9. Give something back: Be kind and generous to people. It really is
true that what goes around comes around. Be nice – you never know
what will come of it.
10. Bring your dynamic energy to your business. For those just starting
out, do business with a full tilt bogey, hair-on-fire attitude.
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