I was 21 when I joined the company in 1991. At the time I was working on a Macintosh LC II and 386 PCs running MS-DOS 3.3 and Windows 3.0. A bit later we also had access to some NeXT systems, which were really cool, as they could talk and all that.
We were mostly fighting Mac viruses in 1991. You see, in late 1980s and early 1990s Apple was the most problematic virus platform. On PC side it was mostly boot sector viruses and simple COM file infectors at the time.
I've sometimes thought back about my career in computer security. When I was in high school, one of my best friends went on to become a construction engineer. Today he can go around and show what he's done to his children. "Look, Daddy built that bridge. And Daddy built that house."
I've worked very hard in computer security for the last 20 years. And there's nothing I can show for it. No bridges. No houses. I've done nothing.
But then I realized that in many ways the work we do in computer security is important in it's own way. Because our job is to help others.
People come to us, asking for help. Today's modern malware, trojans, backdoors and rootkits are way too complicated for any normal user to handle. They need our help for that. They come to us, asking for us to save their files. Their database. Their photos. Their memories, or their company.
That's what we do. We help others. And that, my friends, is a noble thing to do.
