How InfoSec Institute Alum Val Vask Stays Current on Pentesting & SCADA Standards

Val Vask is the Commercial Technical Lead at Bridges Consulting, a Maryland-based cybersecurity firm specializing in national security and commercial vulnerability challenges. Before starting work at Bridges, Val spent 20 years in the private sector working with federal and government agencies.

He recently enrolled in four InfoSec Institute training courses to refresh his incident response skills and deepen his understanding of supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) security:

1. Incident Response & Network Forensics
2. SCADA/ICS Security
3. Reverse Engineering
4. Advanced Ethical Hacking

We sat down with Val to discuss his student experience and learn what he has to say about the value of training with InfoSec Institute’s experienced team of instructors.

Why Did You Select InfoSec Institute as Your Training Partner?

Val: When I first started working in the public sector, I took some training with other providers, but it wasn’t quite what I needed. I wanted something more technical and decided to give InfoSec Institute a chance.

Before picking a training provider, I weighed three key factors: student testimonials, training reputation and price. I recognized my SCADA instructor’s name, Keatron. He is really well known in the industry and wrote a book about chained attacks called Chained Exploits. I’ve done a lot of pentesting, so that got my attention.

I didn’t enroll to just take a test and pass. I wanted to really understand the course content and speak intelligently about it with my clients. When I was younger and had less experience, the certifications were much more important to me. I enrolled at InfoSec Institute to address a few knowledge gaps and refresh my skills.

How Did Training With InfoSec Institute Compare With Your Past Experiences?

Val: Training courses from InfoSec Institute were better than anything I’ve taken in the past. Most of the training I received in other roles (Read more...)