Education

[xsk]

If you're someone who already has a reasonable grasp of reverse engineering and malware analysis, I need your help. I need you to help train more people like yourself.

More likely than not you're "self-taught". Except, when you were teaching yourself you were probably actually relying in large part on the help of others. They freely posted zines, articles, and blog entries. They and answered questions in forums, email lists, and in person. Eventually, once you were confident enough to believe you would be right more often than wrong, you might have tried to pay it forward and share your knowledge back to others.

If so, you're the type of person who is needed. We need people who want to make an impact by more rapidly helping educate those who want to learn. We all know that things like certifications and most college curriculums set a fairly low bar for the expectation of what people should know for security. Certainly in the area of reverse engineering there is almost nothing. Paid training classes can good, but the cost can prevent people from getting all the training they really need.

I believe what's needed are many more people teaching trainings in person. This brings down costs, provides a well-structured learning environment with instant feedback, and results in the education of many more people. If you're a person who already knows the material, becoming an instructor should be an easy step to take. All you need are class materials, and a venue. Finding venues up to the instructors, but now there is a place that lesson plans and class materials can be stored:

www.OpenSecurityTraining.info

This site is meant to act as a repository for class material that have been used in computer security classes at least a day long. The material must be released under an open license to allow the most possible instructors to utilize and adapt the material. It can then be used by new instructors as-is, or piecemeal to enhance or speed the creation of other classes.

But we need more content, and more instructors. If you have classes which you have taught in the past, or currently teach, and you would like others to use the material, please consider contributing it. And if you're one of the people who already knows a great deal of the material currently posted there, please start thinking about how you could take the material and start teaching others in person, at your job, at conferences, or elsewhere. For more about why you should contribute, and why you should teach, please read this page: www.OpenSecurityTraining.info/Why.html

Thanks

Xeno Kovah