Peer to Peer Magazine

Spring 2016

The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association

Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/657874

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24 PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF ILTA | SPRING 2016 Raising My Hand I was working in the copy center of a boutique law firm. It was a Novell shop, and the email was queued to go out three times a day on a 128K-baud modem. Occasionally the server would hang, email didn't go out or a user needed to be added or removed. That required calling the consultant to come out, which could take a day or more, so I volunteered to do it. I started by following the consultant around to pick up come of his skills, and I cracked open the books. I took on the role of network administrator, which was just coming down the pike. Remember Saturday Night Live's Nick Burns, the Company Computer Guy? That was me, only nicer. Another Big Jump Sixteen years ago, the landscape of IT was so fluid that you could almost pick your specialty and start working. The need for computer engineers was so great that anyone with some ambition could go far reasonably fast. Today, roles are far more static. An employee in a copy center could not reasonably expect to get a job working with computers just because he or she wants one. Someone who has studied Novell (or something more contemporary like Windows Deployment Services) is less likely to find a job, thanks to competition from too many experienced technologists. Oen you can make a leap to a new job by switching employers, but that wasn't something I wanted to do. The men and women who work in our IT department have been there a long time. I've been at the firm for nine years and am still a relative newbie. Why? It's a great environment in which to work! How could I move into information security while staying where I worked? As I did 16 years earlier: by asking. But it didn't happen overnight; in fact, it took a year. Never Resting on My Laurels At the start of the New Year 2015, I wrote a leer to my manager detailing my experiences and abilities that went beyond my current role. I had recently gone back to school to get a degree in project management, I write, and I was even a comedian long ago. I wanted my manager to know he could utilize me if he needed help with anything outside my current duties, especially with anything related to information security. And he did. He gave me odd tasks that had nothing to do with the skills on my resume. I happily accepted the opportunities. I started my career in information technology 16 years ago… by asking about it. You'd never believe the results this simple act could produce. by Dino Londis How I Made the Leap to Information Security How I Made the Leap to Information Security SMART MOVES DINO LONDIS Dino Londis is an Information Security Engineer at Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP. Contact him at dino.londis@srz.com.

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