Former student Jonny shares story of how he makes an honest living hacking into networking systems

Jonny’s job, with Bramfitt Technology Labs, sees him hack into corporations large and small (with their consent!) for a living before informing them what he did, how he did it and how to stop someone else from doing the same.

Penetration testing, to give the profession its full name, is also a potential career route for students on our Foundation Degree in Digital Technologies (Cybersecurity) course and Jonny kindly returned to Campus recently to deliver a talk on his vocational pathway and offer advice to students following in his educational footsteps.

Former Barlby High School pupil Jonny studied for four years at York College from 2005 to 2009, securing a National Diploma in IT Practitioners Software Development before progressing on to the Foundation Degree in Applied Computing – a forerunner of the Digital Technologies (Cybersecurity) course.

He went on to top up his degree with Sheffield Hallam University on a distance learning basis and completed a Master’s in Distributed Systems and Networks, Computer Science with the University of Hertfordshire on the same basis in 2018, by which time he was working as an IT Manager with Pryers Solicitors in York.

Jonny made the switch to cybersecurity at the beginning of 2022 but declares that there are aspects of his York College courses that are still of day-to-day value at Bramfitt Technology Labs and also credits those formative post-16 years with shaping his Higher Education journey.

“I still rely on the soft skills that I learned at College in terms of writing quality and some of the technical stuff – like development and database work – is still relevant, too,” he pointed out. “Using SQL (Structured Query Language), a lot of the commands are the same that we learned 15 years ago.

“We also had to do presentations, which nobody really looked forward to, but you have to do them in real life, so it was definitely helpful to get that introduction at College. Even during the Software Development BTech I did, we also learned coding and, even though a lot has changed since then, once you know how it all works that knowledge is translatable to other coding languages.”

One constant from Jonny’s time as a College student and 2024, meanwhile, is long-serving Engineering & Digital Technologies tutor Richard Hind.

“He’s very approachable and knowledgeable and had industry experience before he taught, which helps as well,” Jonny says of his former mentor. “He’s also friendly and easy to get on with.”

Offering advice to Richard’s current students who might be interested in pursuing a penetration testing career, Jonny added: “If students want to get into what I’m doing, I’d recommend using LinkedIn to get to know people and post about the things you are doing. Maybe, then, a recruiter might message you and ask if you’re interested in a junior role.

“That’s how I got my job in pen testing. There are also lots of free tools around to improve your learning and expand your CV by adding to what you have done on your course.”

To learn more about our Foundation Degree in Digital Technologies (Cybersecurity) course, click here

For more information about Bramfitt Technology Labs, click here