A Conversation With Phillip Wylie | An InfoSec Life

By Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli

Despite what many people think, The InfoSec industry is is made by many kind of jobs and roles. One of those most spoke about lately is that of the red team practitioner. Today’s guest, Phillip Wylie, has served the InfoSec industry in this capacity as a practitioner, as a team lead, and now also as a teacher.

Phillip wasn’t always employed as a cybersecurity professional. In fact, his early career is one very distant from technology, security, and privacy; a professional wrestler and part-time bouncer with an interesting and unique story that involves… well, we’ll let you in on a little secret during the podcast: he didn’t only wrestle humans.

Now, we can say that he wrestles cybercriminals, and it is for real. He helps organizations understand how the cybercriminals—and malicious insiders—could take advantage of weak systems, configurations, processes, and more. And, as an ambassador (the 2019 ambassador of the year!) for Bugcrowd, he not only helps bring the concept of red team activities to more organizations, he also helps individual researchers—aka bug bounty hunters—extend the scope and scale of organizational security assessments.

Drawing from his unique entry into the field, Phillip has a lot of stories to share. Here's a short preview of some the things we discussed:

What it’s like wrestling a _____ !!! )of course, we wouldn’t let him off without telling that story)

What it’s like being a pro wrestler and what attributes and traits from that profession could be applied to the world of InfoSec

Inside the mind of a hacker… even if you don’t consider yourself a “hacker”

Mentoring and the importance of being a mentee

Phillip’s desire to pay it forward and the work he is doing in the community to help prepare the next generation of red teams, pentesters, bug bounty hunters, and researchers of all kinds — be sure to check out PwnSchool

His passion for movies — Mr. Rogers is just the last of many (really, we’re talking about a lot of movies here!)

And so much more…

We know. You’re intrigued, as you should be.Go ahead, have a listen. You’ll be happy you did.
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