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Moving over to the dark side by Dan Raywood

By October 10, 2013April 11th, 2024No Comments

Vader_Fails_at_Eating_Cake_by_RiiandRoo

This week marked the third week since I relocated myself into the Alston Works office and took the reigns of IT Security Guru.

Some may question my career choice of a Pr and marketing company over a traditional publishing company, but my main reason for joining the Guru (as it shall be known as it’s shorthand version) was that after five years as someone’s reporter, perhaps it was time to be my own manager of the project.

I’m delighted that with the full backing of the domain owners, determined to push the Guru in the direction I know best, we are all on the same page.

Before you go on, you’re assuming I’m going to turn this into a vanity project of talking about what I want with a healthy dose of Spurs aren’t you? You’ll find my football ramblings elsewhere online, but what this new project will allow me to write about and review the news that affects the information security industry and deal with the key people as I always did.

It is only a matter of days since I started, but to use this space to list my main points, there are few negatives to make, as at any job where you look at the clock and realise five hours have passed is no bad thing. Ever worked somewhere where you are constantly clock watching? Soul destroying isn’t it?

As with any new job there is a lot to learn: who takes sugar in their tea; how does the coffee machine work; how much of the cake can I really eat without crossing the border between appreciative and gluttony?

Sadly the leaving cake was donated by Rachel who after making her mark on the Guru website left us and she was a great person to work with for a brief time.

The same goes for the remaining Samantha, the other “Guru lady” (other terms were coined, I’ve seen the trouble the term booth babes causes) who made some fantastic daily news videos for us as well as being my deputy. She may argue that I took the editor position from her, we’ll debate that offline.

I’ve been very fortunate to have joined at this time. Previous to my starting I was away for two weeks on holiday so wasn’t especially up to date on the main headlines, but in the two weeks of coverage so far we’ve seen an Internet Explorer zero-day, a fresh Kaspersky APT report, the industry coming together to reward cracking Apple technology and criticise poor bug bounty payments, and the FBI bring down a dark website.

What has also helped has been working with a team who are constantly watching the news feeds for breaking ideas. Gaining the ability to type as fast as their beady eyes will be my next acquired skill.

In the coming weeks and months there will be some new and exciting announcements as part of the extending Guru brand and it’s a delight to be amongst those leading this. I’m looking forward to taking the brand to the industry events and conferences and keeping this well worn face out there.

Among my last team I made a huge success of the project, and this will be equally challenging but I hope, ultimately satisfying.

– Dan