Instructor Spotlight: Sean Smith, CISSP

Welcome to the second post in CyberVista’s Instructor Spotlight series. In this series, we interview our certified instructors. In this episode, we speak with Sean Smith, Senior Security & Compliance Engineer and CISSP Instructor here at CyberVista. The following video interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Please find a transcription of interview beneath the video.

Sean’s Perspective

[Transcript] I’m Sean Smith. I live in the mountains of North Carolina. As for my background, I spent eight years in the United States Navy riding submarines. I was actually a Cryptologist. I’ve worked for the largest bank in the country for several years. I had my own IT consulting company for almost a decade. Now I work for a medical software company in North Carolina.

I actually took CyberVista’s online course to get my CISSP certification and I really believed in it. I looked at the different options to study for the [CISSP] exam and the idea of a boot camp was just – too much – too fast of a pace for me. But the classes, the reading, and the tool-set especially that CyberVista has with the LMS [Learning Management System], with the Qbank, the different testing, and the performance tracker narrowed down the areas where you needed to focus more to me was an invaluable tool.

So you can see I’ve got the CyberVista shirt with the logo that you can’t read right now; however, when we get behind the light board, folks, it’s not magic. We don’t learn how to write backwards. We actually write on a piece of glass and the camera does the magic and turns it around. I love it when the students interact and start asking questions. One of the things, I try to let them know from the very first class, is that if I ask you a question and you don’t know, then say you don’t know. You’re not supposed to understand the content. That’s what I’m supposed to help you learn.

Believe it or not, I actually like teaching the areas that I don’t have the most background in. It’s a challenge for me to make sure I know as much about those areas as I do about what I’ve done for the past 25 years.

Most people find it interesting that I’m the risk guy, but I ride motorcycles. The day before your exam you need to kind of relax, somehow. And the relaxation for me was climbing on the bike and driving 250 miles with a buddy of mine all day long. We had a blast. I slept really well that night. And I got up the next day, and I kicked the exam’s butt!

Thank You

We’d like to thank Sean for his participation and continued dedication to advancing his own knowledge as a full-time practitioner along with his commitment to practitioners training with CyberVista. For more information on upcoming courses taught by Sean Smith and other great instructors, please visit the following pages for the CISSP, CISM, CEH, and Security+ certifications.