Secure The Bits

might not have expected. The loss of work took away daily purpose for many and left a lot of us trying to fill that void with whatever we could well. Today, we talked to Spencer, who lost his job when COVID hit and found new work in cybersecurity, a rapidly growing field that's desperately needed as hackers get better and better at what they do, and it's a job that gave him the opportunity to help others as he dealt with addiction struggles that many people faced in the isolation of

the pandemic. After many remote interviews to make this season, I had the fortune of meeting up with a friend of mine in person for this episode. My name is Spencer Landing. I am an information security analyst for the State of Vermont. Spencer's fifty two years old, got a clean shaven head, glasses, a mustache, address shirt, and the background in chemistry. This is that kind of why you've got to Walter White look going on. Yes, I I do math on the side, That's what this is really

about you. I'm trying to sell it on the on the on the state level, we'll never know for sure. Security analyst is a pretty good front well in that job. Working for the state, Spencer's primary job is risk assessment, So we have to look at everything that we do because we do use personal like infallible information such as people SoC security number, their names or addresses, all of that kind of stuff. If you do your job poorly,

what happens. Well, If if I do my job poorly, then we have the possibility of having a security leak that can harm potentially tens of thousands of people. So he spends every day working to improve that security so Vermonters don't have to worry about their information being stolen. And he says that at his core, that's all I

t workers and cybersecurity people want to do. They want to help and they want to make your life easier, better and safer, or to protect you from yourself, because there's an awful lot you don't think about when you do things, and uh, it's my job to think about all the things you possibly could do that could make your life really bad, really bad, really bad, because when a hacker has your information, they can sell it and

that can really mess with your life. You can get your identity stolen, you can have your credit cards maxed out. You've heard all the stories. Well, Spencer, make sure that the people who work for the state are being safe online and not opening sketchy emails because if they got compromised, hackers could have a backdoor to the state databases. There are safeguards in there in between, but um, it is uh,

you know, it's how this sort of thing happens. That is, nine of the attacks happen through email, and all it is is just you click a link and poof there. It is Vermont of small state, so they might not see as much action as other states as far as fending off hackers goes. However, the threat is constant and a breach has pretty dire consequences. So the only real things that people would probably glean from it is the ability for them to them to actually go through the

state government to infect federal government. By law, state governments are required by the I r S and other federal agencies to have a certain level of security, a number they have to hit to pass regulation. As he's in risk management, Spencer and his team use software that assigns risk numbers to everything, like the software, employees are using, the equipment, they're using, lots of other factors. So we add all of those things up and give the agency

basically a number that says, this is what your risk is. Now. The I r S wants this number. So how are we going to get from this very large number to this very small number? How are we going to mitigate this risk? Do you always want to do something like this not security? I'd always I've always been a nerd from the ton nozzle small and fell in love with computers and and science. Those are the two Those are the two things math, science and computers. Those were my

those were my strengths. Spencer grew up in West Texas, real small town near Lubbock. It was very rural. There wasn't a lot to do, so Spencer got lost in other worlds as early as five when he got his first library card, which the library didn't normally do that, but I would go and check out five books and then read them all in a day or two at most,

and then go back note five books. When he was in sixth grade, his school brought a couple of the first Apple two computers into their library, and the librarian

to old Spencer to check them out. So I went in there and played with them, and I was like, this is actually really cool, and then started checking out books and starting to learn how to program, and you know, I can do this, and I can do this, and I can do this, and so it was just a natural love for things like you went out of your way as a kid to learn how to do all that, like original rudimentary coding for the old computers. Yes I did.

I spent my lunch periods in the library on those computers. I must You must have stood out, Yeah, like a sore nerd thumb. Spencer was definitely different. He didn't fit into the normal crowd the way some other kids might. So the books, the coding, they were a refuge. Yeah, it was. It was. It was definitely escape. You know, didn't have a happy childhood. Perhaps we'll say that anyway. UM. And so that wasn't It was sort of an escape, UM. And it was something that I could control, you know,

you can control everything that the computer does. And uh,

I liked that. That was that was you know, it was one of those moments of I can own that he loved coding, loved it, loved it so much that by the time he was about to go to college, he knew that he couldn't go into computer programming because I can remember in high school when I was programming, I would lose days totally just trying to find the two or three bugs that were in there that I missed a semical in here, and I missed you know, spacing here, and I would I would just dive into

the code and just I would lose absolute track of time. Coding was a refuge for him, but it was also an obsession, why is this not working? Why is it's not working? Wise it's not working, and trying to find that one little, one little mistake somewhere that that was causing the whole thing to not work. And you're the kind of person you had to know, had to know, Yeah, I couldn't just let it go. It was a mistake. He decided instead of going down that road, he'd get

a degree in chemistry, one of his other passions. He did that, got an internship at Dow Chemical while in college, but he didn't love it. He left school for a bit, not thinking it was right for him, but then he got pulled right back in by his love for computers. Eventually wound up with a technical writing degree, actually with a modern computer science you know, it made me a happy person. He got a job at a nonprofit within

the university as a computer analyst. Then he jumped from there to New York City to work at the World Federalist Movement, another nonprofit. He was coming up with I T plans, helping them acquire their software, helped them with development, anything computer related. I became basically a system admin for them. So you were the I T guy that like, if there was anything wrong in the company in the building there, like call Spencer, yes, because there was only me I was.

I was the I T. That was a eighteen year job. During that time, Spencer and his wife, Ava had a daughter. Ava got offered a job in Vermont, which they loved every time they drove through it. So they decided to move there, and Spencer kept his job at the nonprofit. I was like, I can still do my job no matter where, as long as I have an Internet connection. Um and so I did. I did. I did that for quite some time, right up until Spencer was doing

this remote work. But then, of course, in March COVID happened. The non property worked for was pretty much held up by big grants which went away pretty quick, and the staff started dropping off one by one. I was able to hang on for a little while, and then, um and May, the majority of the funding went away, and so it dwindled down and dwindled down and dwindled down, and finally I t became not a necessary component, but

something that they just couldn't afford. Like many people in early Spencer was very suddenly out of his stable job, and also, like a lot of people around that time, was facing isolation that would become a reckoning for him, and so it wasn't in the best mental state, and things kind of went downhill for me. Um, after I lost my job. We'll be right back with Spencer's story after the break. A strong work ethic takes pride in a job well done. Sweats over the details. This is you.

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and things kind of went downhill from me. Spencer admits that he was a habitual drinker before COVID, but a few years into the pandemic. Now I feel like looking back, when the world really closed down, people had to face their habits in close quarters, and there was a real fork in the road where some people got shaken up and they're like, you know, I'm gonna start doing yo good, I'm gonna get my dream job, and like basically using the isolation to I don't know, clean themselves up or whatever.

And then there was the other direction where the isolation was just a place where you can go and self destruct. It definitely I did not go into the happy let's go do yoga and let's clean our lives up. Let's yeah, I know, the isolation really tore at me and gave me an opportunity to drink more. That was the thing that that really kind of seem in it. It became such such a daily obsession, such a daily obsession. Spencer doesn't blame COVID for his drinking, but says it definitely

didn't help. He says he always knew their word demons that he hadn't faced yet. But I was able to shove that down onto a floorboard, way way down, deep into the dark crevices of my mind and did that for a really long time and was I guess successful at it um But it eventually eventually catches up because eventually you do feel up the entire basement and it starts overflowing. A lot of the things that he was

shoving under the floorboards were from his rough childhood. He had a lot of trauma that he hadn't dealt with, so in this new isolation where a lot of it was coming back up, he drank more to bury it. And that overflowing basement isn't really a metaphor for Spencer. The deciding factor for me was when my wife took me down into the basement and showed me all of

the empties into it whole. Wow, it was. It was one of those clarity moments, and I had tried to stop and couldn't, and so I had to go get help um and I found a group who helped me out of like minded people who who gave me the strength and the ability to dig myself out of the hole that I was in and give me hope for the future. Spencer is far from a loan between the isolation and losing the purpose that comes with waking up every day for a job. Addiction rates and substance abuse

drastically rose all over the world. I can attest to this because I was one of those people. I had always had demons too that I smothered with alcohol. But COVID gave me a place to self destruct in a way that I never really had. Took me to the lowest moments of my life. And I know this is weird to say, but I'm grateful it did because I got desperate enough to get better. Just like Spencer. That was a that was a good moment in my life

in a bad moment of my life. It's kind of a it's sort of a bittersweet moment, but I'm so glad that it happened because I mean, it's such a much better place than I have ever been in before in my life. Same buddy, So he decided to make some changes. First, he had to get out of this isolation. He needed something to do every day, so for a job. I actually became the head brewer for a local brewery while I was trying to get sober. Uh, he admits, not the most beneficial place to be at the moment,

but it was a job. It got him working. He left that after a few months when an I T job nearby came up, and then there was another one. There was a job that came up and it was like asking for a information security analyst, and I was like, I don't know anything about it, but I'll apply for it. But there this was the job with the State that he has. Now he's never done cybersecurity before, but he still had that attitude from when he was young, where if he didn't know something, he was a dog after

a bone and he had to figure it out. And that helps in the security industry, um, because you do need to find those bugs you need you need to find those holes you need to find and what we need to patch and what we need to do. And after tier interviews, I got the job and here I am, you know, nine months later back to present day. He loves his job. He works every day to make sure of Vermonter's personal information is safe and if he's doing

his job well, people probably never hear about it. No, And I t you typically don't hear when things work, do you hear when they don't work? So and that's just that's just a nature of the beast. But he says he still gets a ton of satisfaction out of it. It can be thankless and might be work that most

people don't realize exists until it goes away. Spencer is also a volunteer firefighter on the side now and same deal unless your house is on fire and you're not gonna necessarily think a firefighter, but when your house is on fire, that's the first person that you're gonna turn to. For better or worse. As technology becomes vastly more integrated with our personal lives day by day, that means they're just going to be more bad actors out there looking

to take our information and sell it. There's always going to be somebody who's looking to make a buck off somebody else and the easiest way possible, and not everybody realizes that it's up to me and other people just say you've got to think about this or make sure you're doing this so you don't expose yourself and any

information that you might have. Spencer says that even a decade ago, anti virus software and hiring a cybersecurity person for your business was a good idea something you probably should do. But now with how online all of our lives are, it's not even a question. These are things that you have to think about and and you have to think about where's my information if I if I put my credit card number in on a website. Is that safe? If somebody asked me for my Social Security number?

Is that safe to give them? Is my health information safe? So you know, security and and and people's personal information has become the forefront of what computer science now has to battle. And with that being the case, there are tons and tons of jobs and cybersecurity right now everywhere for big companies or corporations, startups, or if your main drive is just helping people, there's tons of work with nonprofits and state organizations. Whereat the pay admittedly might be less,

job can be more than that. A quality of life is important, and working for this state of Vermont is it's about quality of life and has nothing to do with the job. Just has to do with making you a better human, being a better person. A job is not necessarily about the paycheck. Part of what drew me to working for nonprofits is that that satisfaction of knowing that when I went to sleep at night, I knew

I had done something for something more than myself. It's kind of funny that, you know, when you first start up coding and diving into literature and computers and stuff. Kind of the point of that was that it was isolation, and now you do it, but you do it for a lot of people. It is something that I do think about and it helps me come to terms with that I'm giving back somewhere and giving back as an important part for my sobriety. It's also an important part

is a human being. If we all gave back more, things would go a lot smoother. Do you feel now like you're recoding yourself? Yeah, I guess you could say that. Yeah, you know, I'm fixing some of those bugs that were there. Yeah, I'm definitely fixing some of those bugs. And you know things, things are running a lot smoother than they ever have been before. COVID brought a lot of people to their knees, myself included, and put people out of work. It's put

people in really tough living situations. It's put people in a room with everything that they are. It's made some of us come to terms with who we are in a much shorter time frame than we might have liked.

But as we come out of this storm with new values, new morals, new ways of living, and new habits, we've had the fortune of having had the time to think about how we can help ourselves, and it turns out as a lot of people go back to work, they've realized that the best way to do that is by helping other people, even if they only call you when something's wrong. What are the next bugs you gotta fix

for yourself? Oh, there's always something to fix. But yeah, learning to be more patient, learning to be more kind, and you know, to know that there is hope. There is hope always, there's always hope, and there's always a chance out there makes life worth living. It's not always it's not always a bullet chair, he's but it doesn't have to always be the pits. Yeah, you saw what I did there. We're ending on that for on the job.

I'm Otis Gray. Thanks for listening. If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, help is out there. You can go to find treatment dot gov or call their national hotline one eight hundred six six to help for more information. That's one six six to seven. We'll put this info in the description of the show.