[SCADASEC] [CYBER] UK teen is world's youngest certified ethical hacker (maybe)

[Bob Radvanovsky]

> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/10/certified_ethical_hacker/
> 
> By Dan Goodin in San Francisco 
> The Register
> 10th February 2008
> 
> For as long as he can remember, Shane Kelly has taken a keen interest in 
> taking things apart. When he was 11 and his family took delivery of its 
> first PC, he promptly pulled off the cover and disassembled it, much to 
> the chagrin of his parents.
> 
> "They weren't too impressed at the time," Kelly, who is now 16, says. 
> "But I put it back together. It worked."
> 
> A few months ago, the Solihull teenager successfully acquired an 
> accreditation in Certified Ethical Hacking, making him possibly the 
> youngest person to do so. While computers and networking have always 
> captured his imagination, he says his interest in security prompted him 
> to go for the hacking certification.
> 
> "That certainly stood out because it was the one qualification that 
> focused not on the defensive side but it actually took you into the mind 
> of the hacker," he says. "It was the mindset that gave me the motivation 
> into taking the course."
> 
> Once upon a time, network security and penetration testing was a 
> specialized field that was mainly inhabited by expensive outside 
> consultants. Now that the net has become a core part of transacting 
> business, more and more organizations are bringing these workers 
> in-house.
> 
> "It's really come into its own as a legitimate area," says Terry 
> Kurzynski, CEO of professional services firm Halock Security Labs, which 
> also provides training for people seeking the credential. "We've been in 
> security for 11 years and it really hasn't been until the last four or 
> five years that ethical hacking has become a service."
> 
> It took Kelly about 10 months to complete the course work and pass the 
> four-hour test required to get the accreditation. That included a 
> five-day boot camp.
> 
> He recently landed a spot as a temporary worker at the University 
> Birmingham, where he expects to do IT-related work. He's considering 
> acquiring additional accreditations for Cisco and Microsoft 
> technologies.
> 
> But eventually, he says, he plans to do security work.
> 
> "Due to my age, it's probably not going to happen in the next five 
> years," he says. "In the industry, you need to have a certain amount of 
> experience. I hope to see myself doing security work of some some sort."
>