While acting as the primary caregiver for his autistic son, Ed Burke gained a range of soft skills he wouldn’t otherwise have gleaned had he stayed in the job market. From managing his son’s illness and sticking to a highly structured routine—Burke says he’s seen it all. Any job, no matter how challenging, seems to pale in comparison, he says.

Burke is currently enrolled in Springboard’s Cyber Security Career Track with the hope of starting a career in incident response or penetration testing. During his 20-plus years as a loss prevention specialist at Staples, Burke apprehended shoplifters, investigated credit card fraud, and had the distinct privilege of being able to say “Gotcha!” for a living. What most excites him about a career in cybersecurity is being able to “peer behind the curtain” and understand how criminals perpetrate cybercrime, in contrast to his previous work in loss prevention, which focused more on reacting to crime than preventing it.

“I've always been intrigued by cybersecurity because I've always done the other side of things—investigating, prosecuting, things like that--but I never got an inside look at how [criminal perpetrate crimes],” said Burke. “So studying cybersecurity was a no-brainer at that part at that point for me.”

During my 20-plus years of working in loss prevention, my specialty was investigations, and that's all I basically know. I took time off to care for my son, and then he was put in a home, so I started to think about getting back into the workforce. I've always been intrigued by cybersecurity because I've always done the other side of things—investigating, prosecuting, things like that. But I never got an inside look at how [criminal perpetrate crimes].

For instance, I’ve arrested numerous people for credit card fraud. I wanted to know how they got those credit card numbers. How was it possible that they got through the banking system without being detected? So it was a no-brainer at that part at that point for me. just happened to stumble upon Springboard in an advertisement, soI looked into it a little bit more and sure enough, I was hooked.

I want to become a cybercrime investigator. I'm always looking out for the good guy. I like knowing that I can play a part in doing good for someone or for an organization. I always took great pride in that and I still do, for that matter.

Penetration testing interests me just because it'll give me that next step to get behind the brain of an individual trying to break into a given system.

I would challenge anybody to walk in my shoes for a period of time. I'm not trying to praise myself or anything like that, but my child happens to be extremely autistic, which makes it very difficult. I’ve overcome a lot of obstacles—be it his tantrums, his being up all night, or having people in your house until eight o’clock at night for his therapies and stuff like that. So I'm not afraid to take on a challenge after caring for my son for 10-plus years. I'm better prepared for anything that would come my way.

I was the manager of investigations at Staples Worldwide. I was a manager of investigations at Macy's prior to that and it was a process that I really enjoyed. So I wanted to continue with my career in loss prevention, but then I started to question the direction the industry was going in.

We were getting away from the foundations on which loss prevention was built. It became more of a meet-and-greet role—shaking people’s hands, kissing babies. For me, if I see a problem in the store, I’m not going to be nice. I have to keep that distance. I'm not a jerk, I show people respect, but I also keep that professional distance.

We were getting away from the foundations on which loss prevention was built. It became more of a meet-and-greet role—shaking people’s hands, kissing babies. For me, if I see a problem in the store, I’m not going to be nice. I have to keep that distance. I'm not a jerk, I show people respect, but I also keep that professional distance.

I think the concept of auditing in cybersecurity is pretty similar to loss prevention—making sure everything is being done according to the company's standards. I would comb through logs of payment activity to match things up if there appeared to be fraudulent activity. I would run queries through a database and do some data mining to get to that information. So I think that my ability to work with the technology and my background in auditing and log reporting would be beneficial to any organization.

Yes, I was. I got involved with the computer security team in our company when I was manager of investigations. We had to implement PCI [Security Council standards] to protect credit cards through the chain, so we had to secure forty-something different points. That was interesting to me.

I had been looking into cyber security for some time, but never honestly had the money to do it. But then I got divorced and all of a sudden had a lot of money, so I was able to enroll in Springboard.

I started receiving emails from Springboard about how to test your cybersecurity knowledge and articles providing background on certain cybersecurity topics. I found that very intriguing and that sold me on the school,` because nobody else was doing that kind of thing. Springboard actually gave me a taste of what to expect if I joined the bootcamp, so I chose Springboard for that reason.

Initially, I had a challenge. My mentor was based in Brussels, Belgium, and the time difference made it very difficult for us to meet, but he was a great guy. He was willing to do anything to help me out whatever it took. So I wound up getting a new mentor, Jake, who has been phenomenal. Any time I need to address anything, he's right on it. He gives me a lot of helpful links and information. He's always available to help with my needs.

Initially, I thought bootcamps were a hoax. But I've really come to enjoy and admire Springboard’s approach because it has given me the foundation to do what I'm doing. You not only get the education piece—what it takes to pass the exam, and so on—but you also get exposure to the real-life aspects of working as a cybersecurity analyst, like working with AWS, Azure, and Wireshark. The Springboard curriculum has exposed me to all of these things.

Don't be afraid. It's never too late to educate yourself and do what you want to do. The biggest challenge I had was thinking about my age. I told myself that it was ridiculous for me to do this. But now I’m in it 110%. So my advice to anybody would be, don't be afraid and if you want to do it, do it.