🔥 What is it like to work in cyber intelligence? 🔥

Sun Tzu wrote that whoever knows himself and knows his enemy need not fear the outcome of a thousand battles. Carlos Seisdedos leans on that line to explain cyber intelligence, that proactive layer that runs above the usual cybersecurity, the kind that only kicks in once we’ve already taken the hit. I sit down with him to understand what it is and why companies are starting to take it seriously.

Carlos comes from the State security forces and now works in the private sector. His geeky side led him to start investigating jihadist groups on Telegram, and he ended up giving talks. He tells the cat-and-mouse game with the enemy’s counter-intelligence and some real threats, like the bitcoin offered for stabbing a police officer, followed by a similar case in France three days later. And he warns that the key skill isn’t technical but tolerance for frustration: you spend months on an investigation and the report ends up in a drawer.

He puts numbers on the pay with 31,000 gross to start at a bank, and makes it clear you won’t get rich. We talk about the big-button tools sold as intelligence when they’re really recycled marketing, about seeking training from people who do the real grind, and about the one attack vector no machine can fix, which is us.