Hi! My name is Ivan Ralchev.
When I was a kid, my father bought me a mechanical model construction set — lots of metal strips and plates, wheels, axes and belts, electric motors, nuts and bolts in a small cardboard box. I started with cars, but I was not happy with the designs I could come up with — they looked ugly and served no purpose. Furthermore, I did not make any use of the electric motors in the set.
Then one day I figured I could find a job for the electric motor. It would open (and close, of course) the door of my room on my behalf. I added red woolen yarn to the set and used it as a rope (I still remember my grandma’s face when I told her what I needed it for.). And I built it. The first working version of the door-opening machine could open the door. The second could open and close it.
A few years later I turned my home computer into a server to host my first weblog. And I lost its first only to get a good lesson about password complexity and the downsides of RDP. Then, I graduated as an economist, but I have dreamed about being an engineer ever since. While wondering how to fix this, I took part in building a mobile banking app, helped bring complex software projects to life, and found comfort in configuring site-to-site VPNs.
Over time, I was drawn by an important aspect of this work — making these solutions robust and secure, — only to develop a genuine passion for cybersecurity. And I have been pursuing it for the last four years, looking for ways to make the digital environments we work and live in better equipped to face the threats of today and tomorrow.
