The thing that convinced me to finally start a blog was beginning on my certification journey.
While there have been tests or programs in the past I thought about blogging about, there was nothing terribly interesting or lengthy enough to convince me to finally start one.
As of yesterday though, I started on my first certification course (though I was always anti-cert in the past), which is eLearnSecurity's Professional Penetration Tester (http://www.elearnsecurity.com/course/penetration_testing/syllabusv2.pdf).
I figured I would start in the System Security section, since it will have the most information carry over to the rest, and some fields I've barely even touched on (malware analysis as well as rootkits).
While I did not get through very much (about half way through module one), I wasn't the biggest fan of what I had done.
The course itself is crisp so far, and I'm sure I'll enjoy Hera when I start using it, but the information is killing me for now.
I've never been the biggest fan of C++, so I'm hoping that I only have to read it/modify it during the course while doing my own development in Python or C if I have to.
Once I got through that section, the next part was NASM. I knew this would be the worst part for me in the beginning, since my knowledge of Assembly is rudimentary at best. That being said, with the way the course is going so far, I'm sure I'll learn plenty if I put my time and focus into it.
Some of the instructions/links have been a bit off so far, but other than that I like how the course looks. We'll see what I have to say after putting some real-time into it though.
He currently serves as a Principal Penetration Testing Consultant for Secureworks. His previous position was a Senior Penetration Tester for a major financial institution.
When he's not figuring out what cert to get next or side project to work on, he enjoys playing video games, traveling, and watching sports.