Carolina People: Jared Perdue

Jared Perdue
security analyst
3 years at Carolina

Describe a typical day in your job.

Doing a lot of collaboration with other teams in ITS. The work involves a bit of research around threats and vulnerabilities, always trying to see what’s new and what’s latest, keeping up with the news and working on configurations for the various projects and software that I’m working on to support our office.

How does your job support Carolina?

We kind of touch anything that involves technology. If security needs to be a part of the conversation, then we’re there. If the University has research and there’s a software need, then it’s probably going to our risk team, and I’m probably giving them some technical advice.

A specific example is the Hall Pass project from earlier this year and last year [that is integral to the Carolina Together Testing Program]. We did the security architecture, security review and security testing on that project.

What accomplishment or moment in your work at Carolina are you proudest of?

I’m really happy about being able to bring the capture the flag competition to our annual SecurityCon event, an outreach program run by the ITS information security office that is designed to feel like you’re attending a security conference. Think of capture the flag as a series of puzzles for hackers and anyone else interested in those skills. Challenges vary from answering simple trivia to breaking encryption. It’s always a lot of fun to see students, faculty and staff attempt the challenges. We didn’t do it this year, but in the past three years, we’ve been able to bring an event like that. CTFs were always my thing in college, and I was able to bring that expertise to our department and build and manage those.

What inspires you every day?

As far as my job goes, it’s all about knowing what the bad guys are doing. I’m always curious about what the latest attack is, the latest vulnerability. I really enjoy getting down to the technical details about what they’re doing, reading intelligence reports, anything that gives me a clue about what might be the latest threat. That level of research and the passion that comes with wanting to figure out what’s going on — bringing that to the team and being able to protect the University from those threats.

What do you like to do in your spare time?

I enjoy doing some on-my-own security study. I have a home network and a home lab where I play around with security tools, always trying to improve the security of my network.

But because I should have an interest outside of my field, I like gaming. I enjoy being outside. I take Krav Maga, the official combat system of the Israeli Defense Force, for discipline, fitness and responsible self-defense. And I enjoy a lot of reading across various subjects.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

We’re very collaborative. The security team is always viewed as the people who say no all the time, but we actually do want people to be able to accomplish their goals and to make things easier. And we try to encourage the use of technologies that help with that but also increase security.

If I could point anyone reading this article to anything, I’d point them to lastpass.unc.edu. That will give them resources on how to set up the LastPass password manager, which is free to anyone with a UNC account. And employees can contact their local IT admin to get the enterprise version for their work accounts. I highly encourage people to use LastPass for their password security.