E8 - Lukasz Bargielowski at F5

On today’s episode of the Security Vendor spin-off series, we’re joined by our host, Jake Brown, and Lukasz Bargeiolowski, the Director of Global Support at F5. During this episode, they discuss a variety of topics including his journey into the Security space and how he managed to get to his current position as the Director at F5. Lukasz always shares some of the biggest changes he’s seen in the space and how state-sponsored attacks are becoming a norm.

Tomasz started his journey outside of the Security industry, actually working in customer services. Over time he moved to manage a team at one of the CRM providers for healthcare sales professionals working remotely for a company in the UK. He then moved into the IT world, joining Semantic, which at the time, was one of the biggest security brands out there. He started to help build their support team in Poland and then in 2015, F5 called him and said they were building a support centre in Poland. That was where his journey at F5 began and as the first manager to ever be hired there.

“You should never be afraid of asking questions”.

An important thing he’s learnt throughout his career is that you need to have a mind of your own, especially now it’s becoming relevant. There’s so much misinformation and social engineering these days that having the ability to think critically is important.

The most important skill you will need is curiosity, which is more of a mindset than a skill really, but it’s a good place to start. Attacks are evolving daily so you need to ensure you’re staying on top of it all. Take a deep breath, getting your facts right is time well spent. Without thinking and getting it correct, you’ll cause more damage than good.

Something that concerns Tomasz is how social engineering has become so prevalent in this day and age. You have access to more information than we ever have and it’s only growing. A lot of different threats and attacks are very much around social engineering and AI helps them become even more sophisticated.

His best advice goes back to curiosity. Ask questions but choose a technology and stick to it for a while. The common mistake people make when trying to get into the industry is they see so many options and try all of them. At some point, you need to focus on one area and stick with it. “Staying consistent and persistent is something I can’t overstate”. Especially for security, knowing how things work and how networks operate before you start thinking about protecting them is important. You need to know the environment you’re trying to protect and secure. Getting those basics right will get you far.

If he could turn back the time, he would choose to be more patient. He was overly focused on short terms goals vs long-term ones. Before F5, he was moving from one role to another internally and it was because of short-term goals. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side!

To listen to the full episode, tune in on the 16/02/2023!