This week Rapid7 welcomes Joe FitzPatrick, a lead researcher at securinghardware.com, as he discusses what it takes to run a successful hardware training session. Read on as he shares how to maintain profitability, how to navigate the challenges of equipment logistics, and how to position training toward what your technical audience really needs to know.
Hardware training without the hardware
A business that runs on talking to large groups of people—as Joe’s does—faces unique operational challenges in pandemic times. As organizations shift toward online learning, Joe recognizes the smart move is to take his hardware training sessions remote. These “Summer Camps” are typically two-day, skills-focused intensives, designed to teach people what they actually want to know, answering concrete questions about command lines and wire hookups. Meandering lectures, on the other hand, tend to delve into technical intricacies that no one is really has much interest in.
Joe notes the demands of hardware training differ from software training. To recreate the proper classroom environment online, he must somehow inculcate technical skills in an atypical environment—to adjust to teaching hardware hacking without the hardware.
Luckily, Joe is a seasoned instructor. Teaching runs in the family—his mother is a technical trainer as well. When she helped him get started introducing people to hardware basics, he found a knack for it. After ditching the big corporate job, he took his training circuit to the likes of Black Hat and the Hardware Hacking Village at DEF CON. He highlights the importance of compliance in training. He frames courses around getting people relevant skills, so it’s not just a series of tasks designated by management to ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
