Ezinne Kalu #HerCyberStory

“My name is Ezinne Kalu and this my #HerCyberStory

1 year, 4 months, 2 days and 12 hours. That’s how long it’s been since I attended the orientation program and said the mantra that has completely changed my life. That was March 25th 2023, the day I became a Cybergirl…I had just turned 20.

From choosing to stay at home for an extra year after high school, to dropping out in my 4th year of medical school… I’ve never taken a bigger decision than when I made the commitment to pursue cybersecurity and give it all I’ve got.

I completed the CyberGirls program in November 2023 after 235 days of thorough training in Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing. I remember how glad I felt at the Linux party after I’d won first place at the CTF. It felt right, I knew I was in the right place.

It wasn’t all glory days though, I failed a lot. I remember not being able to complete my Hack The Box CPTS examination at the beginning of the year and I felt so bad for so long. Thank God for my sisters for pulling me through that period and giving me the strength to continue in this journey.

I got back to work and I made the resolution to do something in Cyber every single day and I stuck to it. The ROI was insane.

I climbed the ranks of the tryhackme leaderboard very quickly. Getting and staying number 2 on the monthly leaderboard.

But it wasn’t enough. Labs weren’t doing it for me. I wanted to do this hacking thing in the wild. The problem was that it wasn’t easy to find offensive security roles and everybody wanted me to have a degree. That’s why I started Security Research and Bug hunting on May 27th 2024, I can’t forget the date.

I figured it was the only way to be a freelance hacker. No boss, working at my own hours, getting paid good and helping to keep the digital world safer.

Starting out I made a lot of mistakes and a lot of people were very discouraging me, but I was determined. I mean, nothing is too difficult for me to master, I am a doer with genius intellect.

So I stuck through it. And gradually I started finding vulnerabilities and bugs in applications. I had been training my eyes and finally I had started to see!

After 10+ reports marked as Not applicable, 10+ reports marked as Informative, I finally claimed my first bounty.

This win would not have been possible if I didn’t exclusively live by my mantra…if I didn’t blindly believe in myself. This is just the beginning.

There’s so much more to be done and you best believe I’m on it. I just have to see what the view is like at the top.

To everyone out there that is consciously working towards something, keep at it. It doesn’t matter if it looks like nothing is happening. Just keep hitting the brick wall with all the tools in your arsenal. I promise you, someday, somehow, somethings gonna give.”

CyberGirls is Africa’s largest #cybersecurity training and mentorship program for young women. An initiative of CyberSafe Foundation