A Defender’s Journey: From Passion Project to Protecting Children Online

In a recent episode of “The Defender’s Log,” host David Redekop sat down with cybersecurity expert Will Earp to discuss his unconventional path into the industry and his current mission-driven career. Earp, a self-proclaimed “tinkerer” from a young age, shared how his early fascination with technology, from VCRs to the Amiga 600, organically led him to a career in web development and, eventually, cybersecurity.

Earp’s journey was not a straight line but rather a “foggy staircase,” where he followed his interests one step at a time. This passion-driven approach ultimately led him to his current role as Lead Engineer at SWGfL, a UK-based charity dedicated to protecting children online. At SWGfL, Earp and his team are developing tools and resources to help parents, teachers, and children navigate the complexities of the digital world safely.

Earp’s story is a testament to the power of following your passion. He encourages aspiring cybersecurity professionals to “work out what you like doing and go and do it,” emphasizing that a fulfilling career is not just about financial gain but about making a positive impact on the world. His journey serves as an inspiration for anyone looking to build a meaningful career in the ever-evolving field of technology.

Full episode of The Defender’s Log here:

A Developer’s Guide to Life with Will Earp | The Defender’s Log

• Passion-Driven Career: Will Earp’s journey into cybersecurity wasn’t planned. He describes it as a “foggy staircase,” where he simply followed his passion for technology from a young age.
• Mission Over Money: After a decade of freelancing, he took a mission-driven role as Lead Engineer at SWGfL, a UK charity dedicated to protecting children online.
• Legacy and Philosophy: He believes in prioritizing what you want to do over what you need (like money), arguing that pursuing your passion opens doors and creates a meaningful legacy.
• Advice for the Future: His core advice for the next generation of defenders is to find what you genuinely love doing and pursue it, as you will find a way to make it work and achieve happiness.

View it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDCagKRI2Ec

Listen to the episode on your favourite podcast platform:

Apple
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-developers-guide-to-life-passion-legacy-the/id1829031081?i=1000727570079

Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3bzv9XKyNWy7hsXZ87KFlK

Amazon Music
https://a.co/d/dllrGs5

ADAMnetworks
https://adamnet.works

The Defender’s Log: A Conversation with Will Earp

Introduction

David Redekop: Welcome back to another episode of The Defender’s Log. I really enjoy being able to speak to people that have been in the cyber defense space for some time. Today, I’m really glad to welcome Will Earp. You are my newest British friend if I can call you that. We spent a little bit of time together, and thanks for coming on my podcast. I really appreciate having you here, Will.

Will Earp: Thank you. It’s a pleasure.

David Redekop: So, one of the areas of interest that I always have is with people who have been in the cyber defense space for some time with some experience, have a broad and deep perspective that not only is backward-looking for where we were and where we’ve come from but can also use that to kind of project forward in the future. But before we get into that, who is Will? How did you ever even get interested in this space? Like, what childhood experience or memory do you have that kind of got you in this direction?

Early Life and Getting into Tech

Will Earp: I guess I always liked technology. Probably the first piece of technology we had was probably a VCR recorder and a TV and stuff. I did force my mom to get me an Amiga 600, which I’ve still got actually, which is a great, great machine. I used to do animation and stuff on it. Then yeah, after that, I had a couple of Psion palmtops. Do you remember the 3A and the Series 5? I kind of did my GCSEs on the Series 5, which was cool because it had a good keyboard and you could do stuff with it. And actually, weirdly, that was the first device I had the internet on.

Right after I finished my GCSEs, I got a proper PC. I got a Compaq Presario, and that had Microsoft FrontPage on it. So I fiddled about with that, and I had some webspace. I lived in Guernsey in the Channel Islands at the time. So, I made a website and uploaded it to that. And then eventually, you kind of like, “Oh, well, how do I do this?” And so, you have to go into the code editor and edit it. And then before long, you’re just like, “I don’t need FrontPage anymore. We’ll just edit the code.” And it kind of went on from there. I got a summer job as a web designer, as it was back then, for a company in 1998, and I’ve just been doing it ever since, really.

David Redekop: Wow. So, going back to the pre-Compaq days when the internet wasn’t around yet, what was it that attracted you to technology when you didn’t have the connectivity, which is the aspect that makes it always fresh and new?

Will Earp: I don’t know, really. I just like it. I like filming stuff. I’ve got a detailed brain, you know, so I like detail.

The Journey into Cybersecurity

Pivotal Moments and the “Foggy Staircase”

David Redekop: Since you’ve been a developer—I just looked at some of your LinkedIn—since ’98. Was there any pivotal moment in your career that really shifted your focus from general web stuff, your FrontPage and your web development, to actually doing cybersecurity?

Will Earp: There were definitely some shift moments. I don’t know if they kind of led me necessarily into cybersecurity, but I did a placement when I was doing my degree, and I was doing ASP and Microsoft stuff before then, you know, Access databases and stuff. The placement wanted PHP, so I bought a book and I learned PHP. That definitely freed me a bit, I think, in terms of my programming.

I never really set a direction for myself. I just kind of fiddle with whatever you’re doing. And whilst you’re doing that stuff, you’re like, “Oh, well, I need to buy a domain name.” You learn how to do that. “I need to set up a server. I need to defend it against things.” And so you just slowly build up your knowledge. You don’t really have an outside view of it and go, “Wow, you’re doing these things.” You just kind of do them.

David Redekop: Almost like you are pretty certain that the direction that you’re going in is the right direction, but the details will become clarified. Almost like walking up a staircase that is filled with fog, but you can only see one or two steps ahead of you. Is that the picture that usually enters my mind when I think about the journey that I took at that time?

Will Earp: Yeah, I kind of didn’t really have any expectations for myself. You just kind of float into whatever you enjoy doing.

From Freelancing to a Mission-Driven Career

Will Earp: I finished my degree, I was living with some friends, and we all started our own businesses. But really, I was a freelancer, and I did that for 10 years. During that time, I think the thing I enjoyed most was just making software—making security systems, content management systems, form systems, all the bits that you need to build a decent dynamic website.

After doing that for 10 years, by that time I got married and I had a family, and we needed a bit more income. And so it was like, “Right, it’s time to pack this in and go and get a job.” I’m very lucky to have landed on my feet where I am now. I work at a charity called SWGfL. I’ve been here for 11 years, and I’m the lead engineer. The charity’s changed massively as well since the time I’ve been here. I kind of feel like the universe wanted me to be here and steered me in the right direction.

A Mission-Driven Career: Protecting Children Online

The Evolution of SWGfL

David Redekop: Tell me what you felt was of particular importance. Why work at a charity doing child safety?

Will Earp: We started off SWGfL as a charity supplying broadband to schools, and we set up private networks for them so that they could access broadband before you could just get it off the street. The organization’s changed quite a lot since I joined, and they were already doing online safety stuff as well. My role was to come in and kind of modernize the tools and allow us to help more people and pivot more quickly.

It’s grown into a part of me, you know, and my identity and the things that I want to do. And no one else is doing it. You come from the parents’ point of view; no parent has ever had to deal with the onslaught of material that their kids are now dealing with. So, it’s all very new. I wouldn’t say I expected to kind of end up in this space, but here we are, and we’re trying to do as best a job as we can.

Protecting Children vs. Adults

David Redekop: And it probably doesn’t hurt that you have children of your own, right?

Will Earp: No, absolutely not.

David Redekop: I always find that dads and moms that have children of their own to protect, it is an intuitive sense that we got to do everything possible to protect them. It’s completely different to protect them versus adults. I always find it interesting that a lot of the tools are the same, but the application and the areas of importance differ. Nowadays, I end up having to always be cognitive about the risks that my siblings are exposed to that are not in IT security, and every one of them now has a story where they got phished or attempted to get phished.

Will Earp: I think for adults, it’s very different. They’re not used to the technology, they don’t necessarily keep up with the trends, and they don’t understand really how a lot of it works. And so they need special protecting for sure. And the kids as well. From an SWGfL point of view, we actually directly do more with adults than we do with children. We do more learning with children, but it’s more also supporting teachers to help children learn about technology. Whereas with adults, we run the Revenge Porn Helpline and some other services as well that actually directly protect adults and help get their intimate images removed from online.

Life Philosophy: Money, Passion, and Open Source

The Choice Between Need and Want

David Redekop: What was your journey like to get to that place where you’re now developing open source?

Will Earp: I guess I just think about life and come back to money again. Do I want money? No. Do I need money? Yes. And so it’s a choice, isn’t it, about how you’re going to conduct your life? Am I going to spend my life trying to get the thing that I need, or am I going to spend my life doing the thing that I want? Going back to long-term views as well, if you keep doing the thing you want to do, it’ll open doors for you.

Passion Opening Doors

Will Earp: I think that’s another reason why I landed here. I wasn’t very good at running my business, but I enjoyed doing it for 10 years. I may not have made much money or whatever, but that led to me coming here and doing the interview, and they liked what I was doing because I was passionate. And so it opened a door for me.

It’s the same with the open-source stuff, I think. If people look at me and say, “Well, who is Will the developer?” they can go and look at my GitHub and see the stuff that I’ve been doing. And we obviously met at IETF. I’m very lucky and privileged to join such a kind of high-level group of clever engineers and invest in the future of the internet. Would that door have opened for me if I was just focused on money? Probably not.

Legacy Over Currency

Will Earp: That’s the way I think about it in terms of the long term. And when I get to the end of my life, I want to be able to look back on it and say, “I did the right thing and I enjoyed it. The money is not coming with me.”

David Redekop: We enter the world naked, and we leave naked.

Will Earp: Absolutely. That’s for sure.

David Redekop: It’s all about the legacy that we leave behind.

Culture & Collaboration: The British Perspective

David Redekop: You’ve also been very involved with government and industry collaboration. Are there any insights that you would like to share? In that context, what have you learned that you think the rest of the world could learn from in terms of government and industry collaboration?

Will Earp: Britain being quite a mature country in terms of policy and stuff, right? That comes from the fact that we’re an island. Back in the day, we were able to defend ourselves better, so we were able to not war, and we were able to commerce instead. That led to us being the superpower of the world at one point. I think that’s probably what gives us that more holistic kind of edge compared to some newer countries.

Regional Accents and Cultural Nuance

David Redekop: To see even be able to hear the different accents… I was fascinated by a clip my wife showed me about a lady who does like 20 different accents of English… interesting that 10 out of the 20 were just all different areas of Britain.

Will Earp: Yeah, absolutely. I love regional accents. They’re great.

David Redekop: So what is your accent? What would you label yours as?

Will Earp: My accent is what we would call RP, so Received Pronunciation. It’s kind of like the Queen’s English or the King’s English, I guess. I don’t really have a regional accent, as it were.

Innovations in Defense: Zero Trust and Digital Identity

David Redekop: Is there any particular innovation that you’ve seen in the last while that you find is particularly noteworthy in our defensive posture space?

Will Earp: Probably zero trust in DNS. The space that I come from, I do a lot of work with school filter providers. So, it’s probably a different kind of mindset than you would have in a public or a corporate network in that you do want to kind of intercept the traffic and snoop on what the kids are doing for the sake of protecting them. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been attending the IETF, is so that we’ve got a voice in this space. Because complete privacy and complete encryption is a negative towards that.

Zero trust in DNS is interesting because of encryption, it’s moved everything away from the network. It’s all moved onto the endpoint, all the protection. And so zero trust in DNS kind of takes back control of that a little bit, I think, to the network.

The Next Generation of Defenders

David Redekop: Do you have any personal advice for young defenders? We are going to need people that are our children’s age to step into the space of being a defender. What are we doing to entice future generations?

Will Earp: I definitely think we need to do things to influence them. That’s the beauty of the internet, isn’t it? If you find a topic that you are interested in, you can just go on YouTube and watch a million hours of content about it. I’m kind of quite jealous of my kids’ generation that they’re able to do that because we didn’t have YouTube.

I’ve got a son who is into technology, really into technology, and he kind of likes to break things. If he looks at something, he wants to know how you can get into the weeds of it and make it do things it was never supposed to do. And so I guess that kind of thinking is quite good for the cybersecurity space because we do need to work out how to break things, don’t we? So that we can fix them and so that we can come up with new ideas.

Final Thoughts & Advice

Finding Your Passion

Will Earp: Work out what you like doing and go and do it. You’ll find a way to make it work. Even if you hate your job and you think, “I want to go and be a gardener,” whatever, go and do it. You’ll find a way to make it work. You’ll find happiness. Everyone’s just got to find their happy place, haven’t they?

David Redekop: I’m always impressed by people who know a lot about gardens and the natural world because it’s just as complicated, if not more, than the internet. It’s just amazing to see human ingenuity when people are really in their zone and they’re really passionate about something. I love that.

Will Earp: Yeah, absolutely.

Conclusion

David Redekop: Okay, that’s a really good message to leave with everyone in the technology space. Find that which gives you real passion and then pursue it, and stick with the folks that are there for the defensive and positive uses of technology, and let’s make the world a better place.

Will Earp: Absolutely.

David Redekop: Awesome. Well, thanks very much, Will, and I appreciate you having the time to spend with me, and I hope to see you in Montreal in a couple of months.

Will Earp: Yep, I’ll be there. Nice to see you.

David Redekop: See you then. Bye for now.

Will Earp: Bye.

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*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from The ADAM Blog - ADAMnetworks authored by Carly_Engelbrecht. Read the original post at: https://support.adamnet.works/t/tdl-005-a-defenders-journey-from-passion-project-to-protecting-children-online/1473