The journey of Becoming

Let me tell you about the Sunday morning that changed the direction of my career.

I didn't choose cybersecurity because I knew it was my calling. I discovered it because I encountered a problem I couldn't stop thinking about. 

There is this image of cybersecurity as a field for people who have always been fascinated by hacking, breaking things, or spending their nights hunting for bugs. And maybe that is true for some people. It just wasn't my story. 

I came from a small town in Morocco. I wasn't the girl who knew exactly what she wanted to become. I was curious. I looked for opportunities, and when I found one, I usually said yes even when I had no idea where it would lead. 

During my first year of engineering school, I started developing WordPress websites as a side job for startups. One day, I finished a website for a startup and delivered it to the client. Everything went smoothly. The website was clean, the client was happy, and I thought the job was done. 

Then came a Sunday morning.

Early summer sunlight was coming through the open window when my phone rang. 

“We have been hacked,” my client said. I had heard that sentence before, but only in movies. I had never imagined hearing it on a Sunday morning, about a website I had just built. 

After shaking my head a couple of times, my first instinct was to open my computer.

As I expected, the website was down. I started searching the web, no ChatGPT at the time and made a few phone calls. Then I managed to reach the hosting company.  With their help we got the website back. Finally.

I checked whatever I had access to, trying to understand what happened. There were several suspicious login attempts, and then I found it: the admin account was still using the default password.  

 How did I miss that? 

I changed the admin passwords, cleaned things up, reassured the client and got the website back online. 

I didn't know what incident response was called at the time. I just knew i had to figure out what happened, contain the problem, fix what I could, and get the website back online.

My Sunday ended very differently from where it started. But if anything, the experience made me more curious. I was fascinated by what had just happened. I started researching website security, understanding the attack and how it could have been prevented. One blog led to another. 

I started fixing what I could: limiting login attempts, updating everything that needed updating and adding a few security plugins. 

The more I learned, the more I realized I wanted to keep going. 

After a lot of digging deeper into cybersecurity, I ended up specializing in this field.

Then another opportunity came. I was selected for an exchange program with an engineering school in France. Moving to another country wasn’t particularly a dream of mine, but I had a hard time letting a good opportunity pass me by. I didn't know it at the time, but that exchange would open doors not only to my career, but to a country I would eventually call home. 

Eight years later, I am a cybersecurity specialist, working across different areas of the field. 

Looking back, I can trace my career to that Sunday morning. But at the time, I wasn't choosing a career. I was just trying to fix a website. 

Maybe that's how some paths are built. Not by knowing exactly where you're going, but by being curious enough to follow what happens next.