CYBR.HAK.CAST

CYBR.HAK.CAST Episode 12: Fergus Hay of The Hacking Games

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0:00 | 35:41

In this episode of CYBR.HAK.CAST, hosts Phil Wylie and Michael Farnum sit down with Fergus Hay, CEO and co-founder of The Hacking Games, to explore how the cybersecurity industry is overlooking a massive pool of untapped talent: young gamers. Hay shares how his journey began not from a technical background but from concern as a parent, after learning that many cybercriminals are recruited from gaming communities. The conversation dives into the need to reframe hacking as a creative, problem-solving mindset rather than purely criminal behavior, the strong overlap between gamers and hackers, and why traditional cybersecurity training fails to connect with Gen Z. Together, they discuss how engaging kids within gaming environments — rather than restricting them — can help guide them toward ethical hacking and ultimately strengthen the future cybersecurity workforce.

SHOW NOTES:

Things Mentioned:

Episode 12 Timestamps:

0:00 – 1:25
Intro, conference chatter, Zero Trust World recap, RSA mentions

1:25 – 3:30
Guest intro: Fergus Hay + early discussion about hacker culture and community

3:30 – 5:00
CYBR.HAK.CON promotion (lineup, CFPs, community focus)

5:00 – 7:30
Fergus origin story + founding of The Hacking Games

  • Not technical background
  • Parental motivation
  • Discovery: kids are being groomed via gaming platforms

7:30 – 9:30
Parenting + real-world exposure

  • Controlled gaming environments still vulnerable
  • Grooming reality
  • Question: regulate vs guide kids

9:30 – 12:00
Reframing hacking

  • Media failure
  • “Hacker = criminal” narrative problem
  • Hacking as a mindset, not a crime

12:00 – 14:00
Gamers = hackers pipeline

  • Pattern recognition
  • Neurodiversity
  • Alan Turing + Enigma analogy

14:00 – 16:00
Gaming as a training ground

  • 3.2B gamers
  • 93% of Gen Z gaming
  • “Gaming is a live laboratory”

16:00 – 18:30
The Hacking Games model

  • Gen Z teaching Gen Z
  • Authenticity over corporate training
  • Youth-led cybersecuri
SPEAKER_04

Welcome to the episode 12 of Cyber Hackcast. Today I'm joined by my fabulous co-host, my BBFF, the great Michael Farnum. So how are you, Michael?

SPEAKER_03

Good. Phil, how are you, man?

SPEAKER_04

Good, doing good. These weekends go by so fast. Was Zero Trust World last week, so that was a lot of fun. So that conference has really grown. This makes, I think, their sixth year, not quite as big as Cyber SetCon, but they had like over 2,000 people. Oh, wow. That's really yeah, it was pretty amazing. You really didn't realize the number of folks there until you went in to went in and caught one of the keynotes. Marcus Hutchins was one of the keynotes. I went in for his keynote. The room was like packed. It was amazing how big it's grown. So that was a lot of fun. Got to be a guest on David Bomble's YouTube as well as I was interviewed by Raphael from down the rabbit hole, down the screen. Yeah. So I spoke to him. He said it too.

SPEAKER_03

Yep, known him for a while too. Good dude. Yeah, I was at a little local conference here in Houston last week. I was telling you pre-recording that we had a fire drill right in the middle of it. That was a lot of fun. Everybody had to get out of luckily, it was only like four or five hundred people, not 2,000. So we didn't have to do it.

SPEAKER_04

A good thing it was just a fire drill.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, just well, I don't even think it was a drill. I think somebody burned some popcorn or something.

SPEAKER_04

I don't know.

SPEAKER_03

Something weird happened.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, it kind of reminds me back in the days when I used to have to go into office when people would do that to cook popcorn and end up sending off the smoke smoke alarms.

SPEAKER_03

Better that than fish, I guess.

SPEAKER_04

So yeah, today we're joined by Fergus, the CEO, co-founder of the hacking games. So Fergus and I got to meet. It's been a few years back now. So we've got to meet and we briefly got to say hello at RSA last year. The company I was working for at the time had set me on some kind of task. So I wasn't able to stop and and chat with you, but at least I got to see you and see you in person.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, Philip, I remember you had that thousand-eyed stare, the RSA stare, where it's like, I've got a hundred people I need to see in the next seven minutes, and I've got to get across this entire conference. So yeah, no, no human to get in the way of that.

SPEAKER_04

So are you gonna be back this year?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so we're gonna be there, we'll be there for the whole the whole time. I'll be in and out for a day or so. There's quite a lot going on in the world at the moment, Philip. The geopolitical world is quite discompopulated. So yeah, we're we're covering quite a lot about it.

SPEAKER_04

Yep, things have changed a lot since over the past year.

SPEAKER_01

So Matthew, is it funny that you were referencing Marcus? So Marcus is a part of the hacking games, he's uh he's a kind of a shareholder, advisor, friend, and we do a lot together. So, you know, I always think that he is the kind of icon of a generation of really talented young people who think round corners and don't necessarily fit the kind of standard prototype, but in the right path, in the right hands, and massive power for good. So we we love him, he's like a family member.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, he's pretty awesome. I got to chat with him a little while in the hall after his after his talk the other day. So trying to get planning to get him on the Philip Wiley show sometime soon.

SPEAKER_03

So yeah, we've been after him for keynoting CybersecCon for a while. We're we keep getting closer. So hopefully we'll hopefully we'll get him here in the next couple of years.

SPEAKER_01

Let's do a great job on this podcast, guys.

SPEAKER_03

And there you go. Let's just keep let's just keep saying how great he is. Maybe he's like, Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, it's kind of yeah, it was pretty, pretty interesting, interesting keynote is probably it was one of the only talks I attended because when I'm at conferences, I prefer to network and talk to people. It's kind of like when I attend Dallas Hackers Association, they've got it's at a karaoke bar, so there's rooms that you can go off to in the back. They've got an area for lockpick, a career village. So I usually go hang out in one of those areas because I'd rather talk to people than than listen to presentations. And so to not add to the extra noise around the speakers and stuff, I'll just go in the back and hang out and talk to people. Yep. So yeah, so for the folks that haven't watched this yet, we've got a conference coming up on May 27th. CyberHackCon. This is a partnership between myself and CybersecCon and CyberSec community. It was inspired by I was at a hacker conference last year. I was at Hack SpaceCon, and I decided I wanted to do a conference. I texted Michael about it, and so we had a call and we're partnering on this effort, and so it's going to be a lot of fun. It's on May 27th. We've got some amazing keynotes. Jason Haddock's is the opening keynote, and Wirefall, aka Dustin Dykes is the closing keynote. He's the founder of Dallas Hackers Association, very been very influential on the local Dallas Fort Worth hackers. We've got Hutch, Justin Hutchins as one of our invited speakers, and Tim Mean. So, folks that don't know of Tim Mean, he was the creator of Curb Roasting and a former stands instructor and owner of a consulting company. So it should be a lot of fun. And CFPs will open up on April 6th and run to the 24th. We'll also, along with Call for Papers, we'll have a Call for Villages. Tickets are on sale now, and we still have some sponsor slots if you're interested in sponsoring the conference.

SPEAKER_03

And if you're a community partner of some kind, nonprofits, that kind of stuff, we also have some more room for those, I think. So if you want to reach out to us about those, we like to give people booths that are doing cool stuff. So we're going to be announcing some of those pretty soon on some of the partnerships we've got.

SPEAKER_04

So very quick. So I guess we will go to commercial and we'll be back on the other side of the commercial to learn more about Fergus and the hacking games. Okay, and we're back. So our guest joining us today is Fergus Hay. And so this part of the segment, we're gonna learn more about Fergus and the hacking games. So, Fergus, if you wouldn't mind sharing with our listeners a little bit about your background, kind of your origin story.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Well, listen, Michael, Philip, it's so awesome to be on the podcast with you guys. Obviously, Philip and I, you know, we've been in each other's orbit for a while. So I'm really delighted that we could put it all together. I guess the first thing I would say is I have absolutely zero credibility to do this. So I am not a hacker, I'm not technical, I've never worked in cyber, but I am a band fueled and motivated by parental paranoia. Two and a half years ago, we set up the hacking games. And we did that because we have a vision, which is to create a generation of ethical hackers to make the world safer. And it all came from a friend of mine who's now my co-founder, who has been in cyber for 25 years, Don Deere. He said, Hey man, you should come and learn about hackers and cyber. I think your creative entrepreneurial brain will find it interesting. So, like, unbeknownst to me, like an like a naive little lamb to the slaughter, I walked into a room where there were three hackers in the room and three on the phone. And I walked out three hours later, just aghast, just shocked. And what I was shocked at is what you will already know. But what I was shocked at was that the vast majority or a lot of the cyber criminals perpetuating the hacks in the world at the moment are like children. And in particular, that they're young gamers groomed off gaming platforms like Roblox and Minecraft on Fortnite and League of Legends and Valorant. And of course, as a parent, I immediately thought of my own three kids who at the time were 11, 10, and 8. And I sat there and I thought, oh my God, you know, this is my job as a steward of their safety and development. And I think we're doing a pretty decent job. Actually, I had no idea who they were gaming with, how they were gaming, and what kind of pitfalls were facing them. And that took us down this kind of rabbit, rabbit warren, which I've got to say has been the greatest purpose of our lives, which is understanding this whole generation Z, how their brains think, their levels of neurodiversity, their gaming origination stories, and understanding actually that they're kind of at an ethical fork in the road. And in some ways, they're very vulnerable to being groomed by cybercriminal gangs. And actually, now we're seeing hostile state actors. But on the other side, they're unbelievably talented. They're like a kind of latent resource of potential that is often ignored and missed by the education system, by parents, by mentorship, certainly by the corporate world. And we think they're kind of an amazing potential for making the world a safer place and a better place and creating a shift on inclusion. And that was the genesis of the hacking games two and a half years ago.

SPEAKER_03

So how do you and now my kids are grown and out of the house, so I'm a I'm an empty nester, but they were all, I guess they're all still considered Gen Z.

SPEAKER_04

12, 27 years old. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. And they all they grew up with mostly like Minecraft. And we had some we sought out servers that were very, very controlled, and we still noticed some cracks in the I mean, it's just it is just, I mean, it's the nature of anybody who's trying to get to young people that they're, you know, if they're hackers and they're trying to get groom them for whatever nefarious reasons, which is an unfortunate reality in our world. But getting them, getting to them is everything they can do is, you know, they want to pose as whoever. And so even in those controlled environments, we saw some cracks there. And it was really, really frustrating. But yeah, we did everything we could. We would have them out in the middle of our of the house in the open area where we could see what they were doing, you know, and in any conversations they were having, you know, that we would hear it wouldn't and was not in their room. And they still had some level of contact with people who were trying to do bad things. But my my oldest was definitely in that mindset of being able to play those games and apply them in a hackery world. I mean, he did all kinds of stuff and went to college for that and everything else. So it was like, how do you see the world moving with things like controlling access to social media in certain countries and now certain states take? I mean, how do you see that affecting this next generation coming up? And do is there a and maybe I'm going too deep into the political side and I don't mean to. I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to figure out like what the direction is. Should we be controlling that more? Should is the hacking game's whole idea is to give them access to stuff in a more safe environment that is more controlled, that allows them to have fun in those environments and games and not have to have the worry so much. I mean, what what's your ultimate goal there?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so I I think you have firmly started peeling the onion there. Sorry, it was all over the place, but I think let's start with reframing the perception of hacking.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So I think the media has done a really sloppy job. It's done a really sloppy job because there's only one image of a hacker, and that is the hoodie up, no face, the matrix in the background, tapping it away at a keyboard. And that is the only imagery of hacking. And the industry has done a particularly poor job because they either affirm with lots of imagery that is sinister and subverse and subversive, and like absolutely not kind of presenting it as a bona fide lifestyle and career choice, or it's utterly disconnected from youth culture and is a bunch, and you know, present company accepted, but a bunch of kind of middle-aged men who are so disconnected from youth culture, it's incredible. And so there's what you're leaving is a void. You're leaving a void of perception of what hacking is, and it's perceived as cybercrime. That's what hacking is seen as by the wider world. But the reality is hacking is a thought process. Jeff Mann, who you guys will know well, he and I were doing a podcast together, and I said, Oh, wow, you must have been super technical. And he was like, I'm not technical. I grew up doing puzzles with my dad, doing like wooden puzzles and metal puzzles, because hacking is a way of looking at a structure, breaking it down into its component parts, and working out what are the opportune moments to either repurpose a bit or improve a bit or fix a bit. And based on that, hacking is the basis of human creativity. Without a hacking mindset, we'd be riding horses to work, or we'd be reading by candlelight, or heating ourselves by coal. You know, in the end, it's the basis of human innovation. And so the first thing we need to do is help the world understand that there's like criminal hacking and then there's ethical hacking, or I'm still searching for a better term, to be honest. And maybe if you guys have one, I would love to hear it. But I using that intellect and puzzle solving mindset to identify opportunities to create and innovate and stimulate and protect and make things better. So I think first of all, we need to change the discourse. And isn't it interesting that like when I was growing up as a kid, it was very super clear what superheroes were. It was like Batman, He-Man, Superman, it was like Wonder Woman, She-Ra, it was the cats, it was the Teenage Moon Ninja Turtles. Like they were the good guys, as populated by media and entertainment and content. And they were the bad guys. And guess what? The good guys beat the bad guys. So when you're a kid growing up, you kind of wanted to beat the superhero. But in this hacking world, the world only presents the bad guys. So you've got an entire generation growing up going, oh well, hackers are the bad guys and they're criminal masterminds, and you know, that's an aspirant. So I think there's a there's a one thing is to frame what the perception of the hack of a hacker is. The second thing is to understand the correlation between being a gamer and being a hacker. And what we've learned is the overlap between a hacker and a gamer is like almost 100%. Pretty much every hacker I've met is a gamer of some sort because they see patterns and they see puzzles and they want to solve those puzzles. Often the levels of neurodivergence meet this hacker mindset. And so they're hyper focused, massively competitive, and they want to be, they want to solve the impossible puzzle. And that is a gaming mindset. And of course, what happens is the world thinks gaming is a waste of time. Parents think gaming is a waste of time. Schools think gaming is a distraction. But let me tell you, we've known since 1939 that the gaming mindsets are superpowers. Because that's when Winston Churchill briefed an autistic mathematician in Alan Turing to put together a team to crack the Enigma Code. And the Enigma Code, as you guys well know, was a communication system between the German U-boats that they were using to shoot down the merchant navy in the Atlantic, which meant that Europe and the UK was basically being starved of all of all supplies. And so what Churchill said to Turing is go find me the corkscrew minds, the minds who think differently, the minds who see round corners. And as you know, what Turing did is he put cryptographic puzzles into the newspapers. And he said, if you can crack these puzzles, then you can join Bletchley Park and join the Enigma team and crack the Enigma code. And the people who solved those puzzles were predominantly autistic Polish women. And so there is a genesis between understanding that a neurodivergent mind that sees solutions that other people don't, identifies patterns and sees and can solve them, is the basis to cryptography, which is the basis to cybersecurity. And that gaming mindset, that cryptographic puzzling mindset right now shouldn't be seen as a kind of wasteful hobby, but it should be seen as a great asset in a young generation. And Michael, what's changed today is that there are 3.2 billion gamers in the world. 93% of Gen Z game. They spend on average 114 minutes a day gaming. Gaming is like a live laboratory for skills development. And in order to understand what we should do with kids and gaming, we have to value what they're learning in gaming. And we actually pulled the world's first research with two universities in the UK to understand how kids game, how they hack the games, how they develop mods and modification software and their levels of neurodiversity to understand what kind of ethical hacker, cybersecurity professional they could be. And the thing is, we should encourage gaming. We should look to our kids and say, great, you're playing Roblox. Let me create a private server. Let's get into create mode so we can build things together. And by the way, I'm gonna jump in there with you as a parent and I'm gonna teach you stranger danger, right? When we were kids, we were taught when you go and play on the street, don't go and talk to the drug dealer on the street corner and don't get in the car with the old guy with a bag of sweets or the puppies, right? So let's teach a kid Stranger Danger and then game with the kids in the environment so that you can help them identify upsides and downsides and risks and opportunities and build your relationship as a parent with them.

SPEAKER_03

Fergus, I want to tell you one of the proudest moments of my adult life. My daughter was on a Minecraft server when she was, it was the same server that I was talking about, but she was probably 11 or 12, and she built a stage and did a whole presentation on being safe online on that stage for all of these kids. And I've watched her do this and she told me about it and what she had come up with. And it was just, you know, things that my my wife and I had taught her and everything else, because my wife's actually more paranoid than I am, and I'm she's not a cybersecurity professional. And I was I was just so proud. All and there were there were probably 20 or 30 kids with their characters, you know, they're all bouncing around like they do because they can't sit still and they were all having fun and learning about staying safe online. I was like, okay, I've done something right.

SPEAKER_01

Michael, there's so many lessons in what you've just said, right? Lesson number one don't wait for anyone else to virtue your kids. It comes from the family, right? You and your you and your wife are virtue signal to your daughter of like what's good but what's bad and what the lessons are. And she's clearly taken from you guys that she should teach others. So like it starts at home. And number two, it's got to be by Gen Z for Gen Z in Gen Z environments. So the greatest mistake is yet another kind of training program from a bunch of middle-aged cybersecurity professionals trying to speak kid language. It doesn't work, it doesn't work. And you'll see in the hacking games, you know, you'll see that you know, our brand, our language is firmly rooted in gaming cult. You know, there is not a middle-aged voice in sight on that one. It is absolutely by Gen Z for Gen Z. So your daughter demonstrated, and I bet if there were MPS scores, which obviously there wouldn't be, but if there were MPS scores, net promoter scores that were measuring satisfaction and salience from a training session, you could take what your daughter did and map it against SANS training programs, and she would be outperformed top right hand quadrant as another educational experience. So we've got to learn from that, right? Let's play in the world that these guys are in and not and not try to force them to be uh you know middle-aged cybersecurity professionals.

SPEAKER_04

So yeah, which I am now, by the way. You mentioned that that's pretty awesome that you're leveraging younger people to share that message with with the kids you're trying to reach.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I look, I think it's called Metcalf law, right? So the Metcalf effect, which is if you can get something rooted in popular culture and you can be relevant and you can be authentic and native, then it will spread like wildfire. And we're, you know, we made a position on that. So we found some amazing young ethical hackers from all over the world, people like Marco Liberty, who I'm sure you're familiar with, but you know, Marco's story is incredible. So so when he was two, he was doing that frustrating thing that toddlers do when they pull things out of cabinets, right? Kitchen cabinets. So his mum Katarina, she put padlocks on the cabinet doors, and then she came downstairs. And at two years old, Marco had lockpicked the padlocks. By three years old, he'd written his first software, by five years old, he'd written his first malware, by 11 years old, he was keynoting at Black Hat Middle East, the youngest keynote speaker. You've seen him, right? He's amazing.

SPEAKER_04

He's a I met him in 2023, and then last year.

SPEAKER_01

He's amazing, and he's now 50, and he is teaching cybersecurity to the computer science postgrads at the King Abdullah Science and Technology University in Jeddah. I mean, the guy's incredible, right? So, what we did is we pulled together a group of really brilliant young people. So people like him, people like Dylan Zoneski, who hacked Microsoft when he was 12, and then they gave him a job. He's now 15, he won Fant the other year last year. Via Skylab, who I know you guys know, you know, she's founded the Girls Who Hack platform when she was 11. I think she's now 18. You know, we've got we've pulled together this kind of community of young hackers. And we said, look, guys, guide us what works, what doesn't work. You know, we want to sort of we want to create a platform to enable this young generation, but it's got to be authentic and native to you. And they've walked with us every step along the way to guide us in the right direction. And we'll need to continue to be close to youth culture to make sure we're relevant. If we're not relevant, we're we're irrelevant. So yeah, it's a it's a really important part of what we do.

SPEAKER_03

I love the talk, the area where you talked about puzzles and and using those, like having something you know that you could put in your hand versus just being on the computer all the time because there's so many concepts that you can teach. We have that at a so Mark Hell over at Cyber Defense Advisors, he's local here. We had our first youth setcon last year at HughSetCon. We had 75 ninth through 12th graders in there, and that was part of the the it wasn't a captured flag, more like an escape room style thing, but there were no computers in that area. It was all puzzles, but it was teaching cryptographic concepts and computing concepts, all with type of stuff. And it's amazing. I see this. We talk about gaming. Like, I'm I still like I spent quite a bit this weekend gaming myself because I was the first generation that grew up with Nintendo Entertainment System and those, you know, Atari and all of those different gaming systems, and I still love doing it. But when you turn that around and say, look, there's some authenticity to what us Gen Xers grew up with, which we played cards and we had puzzles and we did those things that were still tactical, you know, or is that the word I'm not tactical, but give you feedback. I mean my brain's locking on the word right now. Having those concepts being taught that way and having that authenticity coming back around and not just be in computers, I think is something that felt like it was kind of missing because everybody has had a phone in their hand or whatever. And again, I'm not trying to be old man get off my lawn. I'm just saying that's that it it seemed like everybody's down like this. And having it gives me hope knowing that there are young people out there who still yearn for that authenticity and that that real tactile type of that's the word I was looking for, tactile feel and learning that way. And it's not just, you know, everybody in our generations wants to go, oh, these kids these days, but you know, they're learning in different ways. And I love that you're embracing that and giving them that way of going forward and knowing that we want them to do these things, we want to give them help, but putting other young people in front of them to help them teach that is an amazing concept. I love the idea.

SPEAKER_01

Well, you know, Michael, like everything it's a bit of both, isn't it? So, you know, of course, the kids, the data shows that the kids go to is electronic gaming, right? I mean, that's their go-to. But let's break that down a little bit. There's so many different types of gaming, as we all know. You can you can be a wham-bam explosions person like Call of Duty, or you can be like a seriously long-term strategic games like Eve Online, or you can look at turn-based creative, creative games, you know, strategic games like RISC. You know, that there are so many variants of how your brain's muscle can be deployed through the gaming world. And what I find really interesting is that the kids still love to do the real life stuff. So we have we have an amazing talent at the hacking games, and she's called Lorne. And Lorne was picked by the UK government at 11 years old as what you call like a cyber burser. So this is uh a young person in the country who seems gifted and has an interesting cyber. And they ended up giving her scholarship to Oxford University, where she studied computer science and philosophy, right? And Lorne is amazing, but she couldn't get a job. She couldn't get a job. You know, she's brilliantly bright, but she is not someone who's suited to go through psychometric testings. So she literally couldn't get an interview, any jobs, even though she's been handpicked by the British government and financed to go to Oxford University and study computer science and philosophy. But what was really interesting, and and we we found her through through the community, and she's worked from us for like she was employee zero. And what's really interesting is I had to go around to Lawn's home and drop something off. And and her and her partner opened the door, and there was like 30 people in her apartment. And I was like, Lord, like what's going on? And they were like, Oh, yeah, no. So every weekend we host like Dungeons and Dragons tournaments in our house. And they had so many kids in their age at 22 years old. And they're all playing these, you know, these board games for like 10 hours on a Sunday. And I think to your point, Michael, like, you know, it's so easy for us to be glib and binary and think this is just a TikTok generation who are just playing stupid games and not developing. But the reality is they're curious minds and they're feeding on on puzzles and data and experiences to continuously test their thinking. And we but what we're not doing is capturing that insight. And I think this is where I get really, really frustrated. Because on the one hand, you have a cybersecurity industry that goes, oh, we've got a labor problem. You know, there are 5.5 million people in cyber, there are 4.8 million unfilled jobs. And what are we going to do to fill the jobs? And then on the other hand, you've got an entire young generation going, I can't get a job, I can't get a job because everyone's expecting me to have gone to university or college. It's really expensive, now like insanely expensive with a student debt, to have done computer science, to then have paid for compliance certificates that can cost, you know, five to ten thousand dollars, and then have like three or four years work experience, you know, at a at a grad level, and then only just get an interview. And so you've got this dichotomy. And that's because we're using the wrong evaluation criteria to find the talent of the future. No one is looking at their gaming skills, no one's looking at what games they're playing, how they're playing games, how they're hacking games, what levels of neurodiversity do they have, and how that enhances their framework thinking and strategic thinking. And that's what we're building. We've built Hapti, the hacking aptitude AI platform, looks at the games they play, how they hack their games and their levels of neurodiversity to say, hey, 16-year-old Michael or 18-year-old Michael, you know, you may not think college is for you, and you also may not think that cybersecurity is an industry for you, but based on your aptitude here, you'd be an amazing red teamer, or you'd be an amazing amazing forensics and analyst, or you'd be an amazing purple teamer, you know, and that way you can shine the light on their potential based on their gaming skills, not based on these artificial qualifications.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, that's kind of kind of some interesting points that you bring up too. One of the things I've kind of complained about for a while is the way that we interview people because some of the brightest minds, due to being introverted and socially awkward, would totally bomb on an interview. But technology-wise, it would be one of the best candidates being interviewed for those roles.

SPEAKER_01

You know, I was a chief product officer, it was an amazing guy, and his son was interviewing. He's a quant, really incredibly bright young kid, and he was interviewing for a hedge fund. I think it was a hedge fund or like you know, some sort of kind of high-frequency trading job. And this guy is an elite-level talent, by the way. I think he retired at 23 with his own personal wealth because he did so well in it, and then he got bored and decided to go back. And in the interview, the final interview, you walked in and they played poker. They played poker for like two hours, and yeah, that was that was the final evaluation.

SPEAKER_03

Just to say I don't know actually.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I know I'm glad I wasn't at that table. It's interesting that you know people are starting to adopt different evaluation approaches. How did he play the game? I was intrigued to hear that.

SPEAKER_03

So much better than the old what kind of tree would you exactly, exactly. Oh man, Fergus, we need to have you back because we're I think we're Phil, we've been going longer than I thought we would, but it's a great conversation. I hate ending these conversations. Yeah, it's been a great conversation.

SPEAKER_01

There's just a frame why this is beyond the right thing to do. So we'll all roll our eyes at these industry stats, but you know, last year supposedly cybercrime cost the world $10.5 trillion, right? If that is true, that is the global cost of COVID, according to the IMF. Next year, it's supposed to be $24 trillion. Again, eye roll. If that number is true, that's the GDP of the United States. And so if that is the case, then you look at what who the bad guys are. And I think this is the data point, which is why this is more than just a good thing to do. The world's largest research program was run by the University of East London, and they interviewed 9,000 teenagers in Europe and the UK. And here's the terrifying data: 69% of those kids have committed a cybercrime. 69%. A lot of that is torrenting and piracy. 45% have committed an act of serious financial crime. That's identity theft, crypto hacking, gaming currency hacking, ripping out people's meta accounts and doing scams. And 7% have committed an act of terror. The three largest retail hacks in Europe, which cost $600 million, were the people who were arrested who were 17 years old, 19 years old, and 20 years old. Jaguar Androver, which is a two and a half billion pounds, so three and a half billion dollar cost failed up by the UK government, again, executed by scattered spider, where the assumption is it's again teenagers. So this young generation, jokes aside of like trying to help them, they are either going to be a liability or an asset to society. And the only difference is who sees them first. And at the moment, the bad guys get to them first through the gaming platforms. But if we can use really smart data algorithms to identify a 16-year-old Philip who may think he's got no future but to use his skills for bad, say, hey Philip, you're going to be an amazing cybersecurity professional. Here's what a career path looks like. Here's a job matching identity, and here's companies who can offer you apprenticeships and career development and entry into the workforce, then we can shift the needle. And if we can shift the needle, we can make a safer society. So there is a real, real, real serious message and mission under what we're doing. And it's better for the industry and it'll be better for society if we can all work together on it. Agreed.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. So yeah, that's pretty interesting. And also, it's one of the things I'm a big fan of bug bounties because bug bounties, you take some regions in the world, they don't have the opportunities. Say someone goes and spends four years in university to learn these computer science skills, and they don't find it, can't find a job once they get out of school. So, what are they going to use these skills for? So that's one of the things that I've liked about bug bounty is bringing in people, giving them opportunities that they normally wouldn't have.

SPEAKER_01

Actually, that's how Microsoft ended up providing a pathway for Dylan when he hacked into them. They then created bespoke bug bounty programs for Dylan. And I'm sure you've you've probably met him, but he's such a talented kid. And you know, he won Bug Bounty the year at Microsoft last year at Black Hat Vegas. He was 15 years ago. So there's opportunities for sure for these kids, and they need training and development opportunities as well. And you know, that's why what we can do is identify them. We can identify the talent, we need commercial and public sector partners to give them career opportunities, and we need training and development partners to help to help provide a pathway for them to develop their skills.

SPEAKER_04

I guess we're getting down towards the end of the show. It's been a great conversation, all good things must come to an end. So appreciate you taking time to join us, Fergus. And always great to see you, Michael.

SPEAKER_03

Always, Fergus, thank you so much for being on here. It means a lot. I can't wait to hear more. We'd love to have you back, I think, and just really continue this conversation, maybe talk about the corporate side of things and getting help for some of these efforts. So uh would love to continue that conversation.

SPEAKER_01

Total pleasure, guys, a real delight. Thanks a lot for the time. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

This has been a Cybersec Media production. Cyber Hackcast is hosted by Michael Farnum and Philip Wiley, with production and editing by Lauren Andres. Our music is by Kike Guts. The views and opinions expressed on this show are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent. This show is for informational purposes only and does not render or offer turner personalized advice. Subscribe now so you never miss an episode. You can find all of our podcasts, articles, blogs, and conference talks on cyberspecmedia.com. That's cyberwithout the e. And follow cyberspecmedia on LinkedIn at Instagram and Facebook at Cyberspec Media. You can keep up with CyberHatcon by following us on LinkedIn at Instagram and Facebook at CyberspecCon. And you can learn more about Cyber Hatcon or by tickets at cyberhatcon dot com.