Penetration Testing Unveiled: Ethical Hacking & Pentesting

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Kevin Cardwell served as the leader of a 5 person DoD Red Team that achieved a 100% success rate at compromising systems and networks for six straight years. He has conducted over 500 security assessments across the globe. His expertise is in finding weaknesses and determining ways clients can mitigate or limit the impact of these weaknesses.

He spent 22 years in the U.S. Navy. He has worked as both software and systems engineer on a variety of Department of Defense projects and early on was chosen as a member of the project to bring Internet access to ships at sea. Following this highly successful project he was selected to head the team that built a Network Operations and Security Center (NOSC) that provided services to the commands ashore and ships at sea in the Norwegian Sea and Atlantic Ocean . He served as the Leading Chief of Information Security at the NOC for six years. While there he created a Strategy and Training plan for the development of an expert team that took personnel with little or no experience and built them into expert team members for manning of the NOSC.

He currently works as a free-lance consultant and provides consulting services for companies throughout the world, and as an advisor to numerous government entities within the US, Middle East, Africa, Asia and the UK . He is an Instructor, Technical Editor and Author for Computer Forensics, and Hacking courses. He is the author of the Center for Advanced Security and Training (CAST) Advanced Network Defense and Advanced Penetration Testing courses. He is technical editor of the Learning Tree Course Penetration Testing Techniques and Computer Forensics. He has presented at the Blackhat USA, Hacker Halted, ISSA and TakeDownCon conferences as well as many others. He has chaired the Cybercrime and Cyberdefense Summit in Oman and was Executive Chairman of the Oil and Gas Cyberdefense Summit. He is author of Building Virtual Pentesting Labs for Advanced Penetration Testing,  Advanced Penetration Testing for Highly Secured Environments 2^nd Edition and Backtrack: Testing Wireless Network Security.  He holds a BS in Computer Science from National University in California and a MS in Software Engineering from the Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Texas. He developed the Strategy and Training Development Plan for the first Government CERT in the country of Oman that recently was rated as the top CERT for the Middle East. He serves as a professional training consultant to the Oman Information Technology Authority, and developed the team to man the first Commercial Security Operations Center in the country of Oman.  He has worked extensively with banks and financial institutions throughout the Middle East, Europe and the UK in the planning of a robust and secure architecture and implementing requirements to meet compliance. He currently provides consultancy to Commercial companies, governments, federal agencies, major banks and financial institutions throughout the globe.  Some of his recent consulting projects include the Muscat Securities Market (MSM), Petroleum Development Oman and the Central Bank of Oman. He designed and implemented the custom security baseline for the existing Oman Airport Management Company (OAMC) airports and the two new airports opening in 2016. He created custom security baselines for all of the Microsoft Operating Systems, Cisco devices as well as applications.  Additionally, he provides training and consultancy to the Oman CERT and the SOC team in monitoring and incident identification of intrusions and incidents within the Gulf region.  He holds the CEH, ECSA, LPT and a number of other certifications. 

LEARNING IS ABOUT DETERMINATION

Persistence and determination beats the natural gifts and intelligence that you are born with. If there is only one take-away you have from reading about my experience and education over many years it is just that.

Luck is the second most valuable thing to possess. But, you never get lucky if you are not prepared.  Your determination will get and keep you prepared, and then "getting lucky" will simply be appearing in the right place at the right time.

You don't need to be persistent or lucky all the time: just at the right time.  That is, assuming you are prepared. Think of this like a surfboarder paddling out to the waves.  Prepare and train so you are ready.  Paddle out and put yourself in what you see at the "right" position. Watch the waves and currents. Use your training adjust your position.  And, when the timing is right, paddle furiously, get on your board, apply what you've been trained to do and give it everything you've got!

MY COMMITMENT TO YOU

I am dedicated to designing, developing and delivering great content for you.  I hope I have done that successfully here, and I believe you can see that in the 100s of 1000s of students signed up for my courses. 

I have been creating live and recorded courses for many years, and have a great team of instructors who deliver excellent content.  All of these instructors are former (or current) practitioners, so what you will learn is designed and created with real world applications in mind.

EDUCATION IS A PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN STUDENT & INSTRUCTOR

i believe education needs to be interactive and engaging.  For you to really learn, you need to be involved, to ask questions, and to interact with me, your instructors, and your fellow students.  Gone are the days of memorization.   By getting involved you will challenge me (and yourself) so that you solidify your understanding and your ability to apply what you learn in your job and life.

Here are some suggestions that will help you out:

1.  Commit to start your course on a specific date and time.

2. Commit to dedicate X hours per day to that course (ideally at the same time of day/night)

3. Review what you didn't understand after you have moved forward.  That is, 'go back to go forward.'

4. Participate in our community.  Ask questions. Push back on what is presented.  Make us do more to help you learn.  If we (or any other instructor) doesn't do that, then the courses simply become dusty content on your digital shelf. You will actually have learned very little.

My singular goal is to spread useful knowledge and skills to you. That is why I am here. Feel free to reach out to me in our classes and online.

Always be learning.

~ Paul