From a Professional Musician to a Cybersecurity Enthusiast
My name is Petri Hannonen, and I work as a cybersecurity enthusiast at Oivan.
I started my journey at Oivan on the 1st of February, 2021. My colleague, who is also studying with me at Laurea University of Applied Sciences, encouraged me to apply for a cybersecurity position at Oivan at the end of 2020. After I had applied, I was soon interviewed by the Head of Cybersecurity of Oivan. I was then given a hands-on exercise as part of the interview process. The exercise was challenging, but I managed to do it successfully and got admitted.
On the first day at the Helsinki office, everyone I talked with was very welcoming and friendly, so I was excited to start working, but I was also feeling a bit nervous as this is my first job in the cybersecurity field. I used to work as a professional musician for 14 years before deciding to change my career to cybersecurity. In Laurea, I was focusing on studying computer programming. Still, my interest also expanded to cybersecurity, so I chose the cybersecurity curriculum, and now, I am in my 3rd and final year of studies before graduation.
My first task at Oivan was to deploy an open-source security visibility tool to support my team in security management. That was something I had never done in my life, and I encountered different issues while working on the task. Finally, when I got it up and running, I realized that I learned a lot from this task. Soon after that, I started working on my first vulnerability assessment project with my colleagues. Since then, I’ve been continuously working on several security assessment projects for different clients.
One of my key responsibilities, which I also enjoy, is security onboarding for new Oivan employees. That is where I help people secure their work gear to protect our company from cyberattacks. Oivan, as a company, is growing rapidly, and during my first six months of employment, Oivan has already hired about 50 new employees, so this security onboarding work is essential.
Last summer, I had my first experience from the beautiful fellowship between Oivan employees at the Helsinki office when we had a couple of get-togethers in a park next to the office. I enjoyed those evenings, and I’m looking forward to the next one. It was nice to get to know some of my colleagues that I had not met in person since I’ve been mostly working from home during the pandemic. Furthermore, we usually enjoy our security team meetings held online, at the office, or even at different coffee shops in the Helsinki capital area. During these meetings, we discuss our work progress, plans for the next week and our Head of Cybersecurity also brief our team about upcoming security projects.
After successfully completing my 6-month probation period, Oivan enrolled me in an official EC-Council’s CEHv11 (Certified Ethical Hacker) course. It started with one week of online training, and the experience was absolutely fantastic. The cybersecurity field is changing every day, so it is crucial to be up to date with the latest developments. I hope to have enough time to go through all the course material during the next couple of months, become a certified ethical hacker, and advance even more in my cybersecurity career. I think it is great that Oivan supports its employees to develop their professional skills further and even helps them do so somewhat during working hours.
All in all, I’ve been delighted to work for Oivan and experience the company values: Fellowship, Responsibility, and Reliability. These values are the golden guidelines that keep me motivated and do my best for my colleagues and the whole company.
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