S6E2: John Hammond on Security Research, Storytelling, Deception, and Getting Hired in Cybersecurity

About this episode

John Hammond discusses his journey in security research and the importance of storytelling in cybersecurity.

John Hammond on Security Research, Storytelling, and Deception for Defenders In this Simply Defensive episode, hosts Josh Mason and Wade Wells interview John Hammond, a Huntress security researcher, YouTuber, and educator, about his career path and defensive research. Hammond explains he has never worked as a penetration tester, SOC analyst, or detection engineer, instead “falling into” security research through hands-on Capture the Flag work and building cyber threat emulation course content, earning Offensive Security’s OSCE3 bundle recognition. He discusses why storytelling and communication are critical for translating attacker tradecraft into actionable defenses, emphasizing understanding the attack chain to identify places to break it. He recommends building a public portfolio of write-ups and notes, and says multiple creators covering the same topic can still provide value through different explanations. The conversation also highlights endpoint deception and honeypots, challenges of reversing compiled binaries versus script-based malware, and his advice to document thoroughly in shared organizational knowledge bases. 00:00 S6E2: John Hammond on Security Research…

People in this episode

Hosts: Josh Mason, Wade Wells

Guest: John Hammond

Topics covered

• security research
• storytelling
• deception
• cybersecurity careers
• Capture the Flag
• defensive strategies

Keywords

• security research
• storytelling
• deception
• Capture the Flag
• cybersecurity
• Offensive Security
• portfolio

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Huntress, Offensive Security

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