Christo Goosen, chapter lead at OWASP, defines his career as trying to tackle the biggest technical challenges he can find.
From grade 9, computer programming was offered at his school and he matriculated with IT as one of his highest performing subjects. "From school I decided to study biotechnology, but turns out I lost interest and missed IT too much. This led me to study informatics, where I was interested in the technical aspects more than the soft skills and analysis."
This led Goosen to leave academics and pursue further technical challenges as a Python software developer. "I started my development career software development career in a small start-up during my studies as a part-time developer."
Once his honours degree was completed, he was employed by a more established small company modifying ERP software. "Seeking experience and interesting challenges, I moved to my current employer, developing on unified business communications."
A move to security
Explaining his decision to become involved in the IT security sector, Goosen says he had an interest in security from his university days, and at his previous job he had to ensure and implement some security measures as a systems administrator.
"I met many of the security community in Cape Town and wanted to get more involved. When my brother decided to start a local chapter of OWASP I jumped at the chance to learn more and contribute to the Cape Town and South African community. For me it is important to support the local community of security professionals, as they implement, guard, test and build the security for South Africa's infrastructure and services."
For Goosen personally, a defining point in his career was starting to focus on software development, and also focusing on Linux, the Python language and increasing his interest and emphasis on security. Would he have done anything differently? "I would have started on Linux as a youth, and started focusing on security earlier too."
Solving challenges
Speaking of what he loves about his work, Goosen says he enjoys the problem-solving challenges, working with and on open source projects, and being part of the capable and world class developers in South Africa. On the down side, he says South Africa's Internet infrastructure can hamper operations.
In terms of the events and developments in SA's tech sector that stand out, he says: "South Africa has the right environment for companies from abroad (VOSS, Amazon, Oracle, etc.) to employ highly skilled South African developers. Many of these developers are able to work from home or shared offices and sync up with their teams via teleconferencing. Other events that stand out are Mark Shuttleworth starting the Ubuntu distribution of Linux, and the SKA project being developed locally in SA. Many scientists and developers are doing amazing things with Python on the project."
Goosen will be a panellist at the ITWeb Security Summit 2016 to be held at Vodacom World from 16 to 20 May.
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