THE TRUST SIGNAL · Whyze Labs

By Alano Vasquez, CEO at Whyze Labs (https://www.whyzelabs.com)

The Guy Who Called The Command Line "The Black Window" Is Now Speaking At Black Hat

What a salesperson turned identity threat researcher taught me about second chances, soft skills, and why the best careers don't start where you expect them to.

I posted something on LinkedIn looking for podcast guests.

Filipi Pires messaged me. His colleague passed it along. An hour later he was sitting across from me in our media room at Black Hat.

That's how this one started. And it ended up being a fantastic conversation.

He seemingly had no business being in cybersecurity. But someone gave him a shot anyway.

Filipi is currently Head of Technical Advocacy at SCYTHE (and was Head of Identity Threat Labs at Segura).
Also he is a red team leader, university professor, and international speaker presenting four talks across Black Hat and Defcon this week alone.

He started his career in sales.

Not security. Not engineering. Sales.

When he walked into his first cybersecurity interview in 2015, he didn't know what a command line interface was.

He called it "the black window."

Because it was black. And it was a window.

The hiring manager stopped him mid-interview. Then did something most people wouldn't - he looked past the technical gap and hired him anyway.

Hard skills I can teach you. Soft skills are enough for me.

One person took a chance on Filipi when he hadn't earned it yet. He hasn't forgotten him and is very grateful for that day. 

Your background isn't a liability. It's the differentiator.

Here's the thing about Filipi's story that I keep coming back to.

His sales background is exactly why he's effective at what he does now.

He can walk into a room full of CISOs, engineers, or university students and make a complex attack vector land in plain English. He learned how to read a room long before he learned how to read a threat report.

That skill doesn't come from a certification. It comes from years of standing in front of skeptical customers trying to convince them your product works - before you had any proof it would.

"Imagine working in a solution that protects against threats. How do you convince a customer during a POC? You'd need them to receive an attack during the POC. That doesn't make sense. So I built a staging environment to simulate it." - Filipi Pires

That's not a researcher talking. That's a salesman who got creative.

The best technical communicators I've met in this industry almost always have a non-linear path behind them. The ones who can only talk to other engineers rarely move the needle on trust.

He doesn't want to be the biggest speaker. He wants you to implement something by Monday.

Filipi said his goal isn't to be recognized as a great speaker.

He wants to be recognized as the guy whose talk you walked out of - and actually did something with. Next Monday. In your job. In your environment.

That's a completely different standard.

Most content in this industry is built for applause. His is built for action. And you can feel the difference when you talk to him.

He gave a talk the night before we sat down - walking through AWS misconfigurations, step by step, showing exactly how to fix them. Three people came up to him afterward and said: now I know what I need to fix in my environment.

That was enough for him.

"I can go to church on Sunday. But I make my life different on Monday." - Filipi Pires

Ten years isn't a long time when you love what you're doing.

Filipi's closing message was simple.

Respect your journey.

It took him ten years to get to Black Hat as a speaker. Not one month. Not one year. Ten years of building skills, taking stages in Portuguese and Spanish and imperfect English, moving across continents, teaching students, running nonprofits, showing up.

People overestimate what they can do in a year.

They drastically underestimate what they can build in a decade.

The best people I've met at this conference aren't the ones moving fastest. They're the ones who are most clear on why they're moving at all.

Filipi is one of those people.

Watch the full episode on YouTube: From Salesman to Red Teamer: The Calling Behind a Global Cybersecurity Mission - w/ Filipi Pires - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVCVv-iYJMQ 

Full Episode - LinkedIn Live link: https://www.linkedin.com/events/7440573037692956672 

P.S. We're booking strategy sessions for cybersecurity and technology brands who want to understand how founder-led video and targeted LinkedIn distribution can compress your time-to-trust. Reach out directly on LinkedIn or find us at https://whyzelabs.com