Kao’s Story

My Tech Path

I started working when I was 15-16, stacking shelves at a supermarket while finishing high school.  While I did complete year 12 I actually failed, I received some bad career and study advice and decided that working and paying bills were more important than grades.  From stacking shelves, I went into management and was the youngest department manager the company had ever promoted which taught me so many skills that I still use today. Fast forward a year and I got sick, very sick and was forced out of work and onto the disability pension.  I didn’t let that stop me, I went in and out of jobs including more retail, some hospitality, I was a photographer’s assistant, a stockroom worker, I did pamphlet delivery and other odd jobs and never gave up on getting back to work which then took me into butchery where I was good and even ran one of the stores for the company until I was in a workplace accident that saw me severely damage my right shoulder.

It took 6 years to recover, and one day I was on my PC as usual when I saw the advertisement for TAFESA’s new Cybersecurity course and that there was an information session for all the IT courses in 3 hours.  I decided I needed to go.  Going to that information session was the trigger for my Tech career, I had always been around and into PC’s.  I built my first PC for myself at 17 and probably should have gone into IT after high school, but hindsight is just that, hindsight.  I chose to enrol into the Certificate IV in Cyber Security for 2019 after having a discussion with one of the lecturers who became pivotal to my success both at TAFE and again in the future.  Attending TAFE full-time after my recovery was hard, but it was also amazing.  I completed the course with so much knowledge and I was ready to jump into the industry and Covid hit and my dad was going through major life-changing surgeries so I took a year off. 

2021 I decided to up skill rather than look straight for work, I enrolled in The University of South Australia’s (soon to be The University of Adelaide) in the Bachelor of Information Technology Networking and Cyber Security, the lecture I mentioned from TAFE was again a great help and impact here with navigating some of the issues I had in enrollment here. In 2022 I was introduced to my current employer at Digital Resilience, I was just done with my first year of uni and I was eager to build my professional network and meeting Paul was a spark that has turned into a blazing fire of a career.  I was offered the ability to shadow and work with his company, it was small but very experienced in the financial sector for cyber security. I shadowed Digital Resilience for 12 months, I went to dozens of meetings, workshops, and client engagements and had the opportunity to work very closely with some amazing people.  The end of 2022 Paul offered me a trainee-ship which I turned down to focus on University, this was a very hard decision to make.  Instead, I found another opportunity, I worked with the university to organise an internship that would cover the last of my University degree and give me 6 months of industry experience working full time. 

Mid 2023 I finished my University Degree! I had a GPA of 6.76 out of 7 which I never thought I would achieve given my last attempt at University studying History and Politics in my early 20’s was resulting in P2’s and C’s.  I transitioned my internship into a permanent graduate cyber security analyst position with Digital Resilience then in the next few months moved quickly to where I am now.  I went from an intern to a graduate analyst to an analyst to a Cyber Security Consultant in 6 months. I also acquired a few industry certifications along the way while further developing my skills.  While I primarily have a focus on Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) at the moment I have also been using my technical skills and configuring and installed vendor systems for EDR and have been developing an interest in how cybersecurity and Operational Technologies work.

The best advice I’ve received

My Pa told me:

In life there will be times things go wrong and you will feel stuck, when this happens you need to build a bridge and move forward. Because if you stop for too long you will start to be swallowed by the things that don’t matter instead of reaching your goal.

What would you tell your 15 year old self?

Things get better, just keep your chin up and find small positives hidden in the negatives around you.