Most people who earn the Certified Ethical Hacker certification are network engineers or security professionals—so as a software engineer, I was a bit out of my element. For me, becoming a C|EH wasn’t about configuring firewalls or hardening networks (though I learned plenty about that). It was about seeing security through the eyes of an attacker, then bringing those insights back to my world: code. Suddenly, I wasn’t just writing features; I was spotting vulnerabilities before they happened—designing APIs with evasion in mind, questioning data flows and UI’s that ‘worked fine,’ but were vulnerable and nudging teammates to think like adversaries. The certification gave me a vocabulary and a mindset most developers never get exposed to, and that’s been invaluable. At the end of the day, the best defense isn’t just a strong perimeter—it’s software built by people who know how things break.

I’m deeply honored to be inducted into the EC-Council CEH Hall of Fame among the Top 100 worldwide. To be recognized alongside so many brilliant minds in cybersecurity is incredibly humbling—especially as someone who came at this from the software side. Grateful for the opportunity to learn, and excited to keep bridging the gap between security and software engineering.