Charlotte Knill, aged 23, is an Information Security Consultant and Forensic Analyst for Security Risk Management Ltd in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Here she shares why she decided to study digital forensics and work in cyber security.
Since finishing my university studies in May, I have just entered into my fourth month of working full-time in the world of cyber security…..and what a quick, thought provoking and exciting four months it has been!
So far, within these four months I have:
Ciao!
Learned a little bit of Italian – hackers don’t all speak the same language so I spent a few days translating Italian to try and suss out exactly what a hacker was doing. Not quite fluent yet but as
Dragons?
Learned about Romanian mythology – yes, that’s right…Romanian mythology. It all started off when I saw this…
“GET /w00tw00t.at.blackhats.romanian.anti-sec:) HTTP/1.1” 404 142 “-” “ZmEu”
….it was something I hadn’t seen before and knew it didn’t look quite right so I started by Googling “ZmEu”…
I googled “ZmEu” and discovered that this is a creature of Romanian mythology! It turns out that this dragon-like humanoid has the ability to create and use artefacts, such as weapons…strikingly similar to hackers. By this point, I was trying to build up an image in my head to try and figure out exactly what it was – and so far I could only imagine a big dragon-like mythical creature sat behind a laptop.
After a bit more digging, it turns out that I had come across a bot that was trying to find vulnerabilities on a server (basically finding out if there were any weak points in which a hacker could access). SO, thanks to this bit of interesting research, I won’t be forgetting THAT any time soon… which is pretty useful considering the amount of things that actually go on in the world of cyber.
Just being me
Being nosey. One of my favourite things about digital forensics is that I get to put one of my personal traits into practice! Being able to dig as deep as possible to find answers is something I have been doing a lot of – I don’t stop digging until I find answers. I’ve learnt that the deeper you dig, the more you learn – which makes cyber security even more interesting. Every day I have spent working in the industry so far I have learnt something new.
The journal interview
I had an interview with this Newcastle based newspaper about my journey into cyber, my thoughts on women coming into cyber security and also about my blog being read around the world. Please feel free to read it here (share if you like!) and I hope you find it useful!
And amongst all this I managed to squeeze in a week holiday on the beautiful island of Kefalonia…
Charlotte Knill
At the beginning of July this year, I graduated from the University of Sunderland with a first class honours degree in Computer Forensics with Sandwich Year. My sandwich year/placement year was spent with Northumbria Police in their Hit-tech Crime Unit. Before I graduated, I was offered a job with Security Risk Management Ltd as an Information Security Support Consultant and Forensic Analyst where I help to identify how company websites have been hacked and personal details have been stolen. Initially, this was part-time while I finished off my University studies and then moved into a full-time role once my studies were completed.
I have recently set up a blog to help encourage women into cyber security by sharing my journey into the industry and my fun stories from within it.
