Meet Clayton, Senior Cybersecurity Analyst

How did you land in Tulsa?

I came to Tulsa from Lexington, Kentucky, through the Tulsa Remote program, which pays remote workers to move here. There are other programs like this, but Tulsa’s is the best. At the time, I already had a remote job, but inTulsa recruited me for a better one after I got here. Also my wife speaks Spanish fluently, and she’s still learning English. There’s a higher Latino population here, so there’s a higher chance for her to make Spanish-speaking friends. That’s why Tulsa appealed to us.

What led you to your new role?

Donna Draper from inTulsa reached out to me about a job I had applied for. I had heard of inTulsa through the Tulsa Remote program, so I spoke with her, and things moved forward from there.

What makes working with the inTulsa team unique?

I worked with Donna for six to eight weeks prior to actually starting at my new job. She was always responsive. Just from the way that she talks, I knew that she knew what she was doing. Her way of asking questions was to get my side first, and how I felt about the interview process. She would ask, “How did you feel about the interview? How do you think you did?” And she did this before telling me what the employer said and wanted. She was genuinely interested in how I felt about the opportunity. She really sold me on the company as well. She had good things to say and gave examples of the growth opportunities in the company.

What’s a typical day in your role like?

The company I work for is a managed security service provider (an MSSP). Basically, we manage security for existing companies. I look into security events that trigger in our system. Since I'm a senior analyst, I have more experience than a lot of the junior analysts, so I can do a more holistic analysis. There might be data that says one thing, but we know something's off, so we need to look into it more. We keep different metrics in mind, and we have to make sure our events are resolved or investigated within a certain time. We use open source intelligence to look into IP addresses and URLs, and if it resolves to a certain company, then I might look into that company to see if it has a history of spam or phishing. I also write up reports of our findings for our clients so they can take action if they want. If we find a false positive, I'll submit a report on our end to our threat engineering team.

What do you like best about your role?

What gets me excited the most is that this is an opportunity for me to learn. I have added responsibility in this role. I'm now meeting with clients, so I'm the point of contact with them. I have greater investigative responsibilities for the security events we dig into. I'm not anyone's boss, technically, but I am a senior analyst, so I get to give advice to the junior analysts.

What is the culture like at your company?

There are great growth opportunities here. One of the guys here got promoted around the time that I was hired. He’d only been here three months, but now he's a lead analyst. The guy who trained me got promoted last week. Another guy who had the same job title as me got moved to a different department, which included a pay raise. So, there's lots of actual movement going on in the company, which is nice.

They also encourage us to get certifications, and they will reimburse us, even if it's not directly required for the job. They really encourage professional development. Also, my coworkers are all very welcoming. They genuinely want to help.

What do you enjoy most about living in Tulsa?

I started doing stand-up comedy recently, meeting cool people in the local comedy community. That's something I've always wanted to do. I didn't move here for that, of course, but Tulsa has a good little comedy scene. Aside from that, we've met cool people, and through Tulsa Remote we have made several friends. We've taken advice from people we've met who have said, “You're new to Tulsa, check out this or that cool thing.” We go and see those things.

There's also a good cost of living. If you're already living in a place that has a low cost of living, you can move here and have more things to do and it's still affordable. If you're from somewhere really expensive, you can save a lot of money moving here, and there's still definitely things to do.

What would you tell people who are thinking about moving here?

Recently, the federal government declared that Tulsa is now a recognized technology hub. When they did that, it unlocked a bunch of federal funding. Technology, cybersecurity, is kind of a tight market right now, and since Tulsa is a designated tech hub, there are a lot more opportunities here than in a lot of other places. If you're into tech, there's definitely room for growth with companies hiring here.

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