Growing up in Bijela, studying in Podgorica and a chance entry into cybersecurity

My conversation with Ivan Minić on Pojačalo was split into two episodes. In this first one we went back to the beginning: growing up by the sea in Bijela, school in Herceg Novi, my studies in Podgorica and my first job at Telenor, where I got into information security almost by accident. We also talked about the people who shaped me, and why I now try to do the same for others.

Services, our own products and putting out fires

Information security is still my main focus, from several angles.

What my companies do

• —Protect companies’ information systems.
• —Implement cybersecurity standards, help with regulatory compliance and train employees.
• —Run penetration tests and simulate cyberattacks.

We have also started building our own products, adapted to the way we work, because today it is easier than ever to build a customised product and keep the complete IP. I have split it across several legal entities, product startups and a service organisation, so each stays focused on its own goals, and together they go to different markets.

That is why it is hard to pin down my role in each company. Every day I look at where the fire is biggest, whether that is blocked product development or a client under a major cyberattack, so in practice I am a jack of all trades and a multitasker who unblocks problems wherever they come up.

Growing up in Bijela, between the sea and computers

Technology drew me in from an early age. Even with satellite television we looked for ways around the operators’ protection: a neighbour downloaded new codes and refilled the cards to unlock channels, and I wanted to know how that worked. When I got my first computer, I didn’t leave it, and opening the case for the first time to see the motherboard under a ton of dust was a core-memory moment of my childhood. After that I cleaned it every week, just to poke around inside.

Bijela is a small place in Boka Kotorska, and growing up by the sea is the greatest luck and treasure of my childhood. I believe it changed the way I think about many things, although I only began to appreciate it after I left and realised that part of me had stayed there.

Ana’s brother

My sister Ana, two years older, is one of the most intelligent people I know. She was the best pupil of her generation, so wherever I turned up, teachers said “Ah, you’re Ana’s brother!” and expected me to shine like her, but I was the complete opposite and shone only in the subjects that interested me. For the rest, Ana tutored me at home, writing practice tests and marking them in red pen.

A doctor’s son who chose computers

My father is an orthopaedic surgeon who spent most of his life in hospital. What I am most proud of is that he has stayed a clean, true doctor to this day. Anyone could turn to him at any hour of the day or night, and he never took a bribe. I know it from how we lived: we stayed in the flat I grew up in, and he still lives very modestly.

My sister followed in his footsteps, but medicine was not for me. Working in beach bars from the age of 14, I realised I wanted some distance, a filter, between me and people, and computers gave me exactly that.

Secondary school in Herceg Novi and finding myself

My secondary school was in Herceg Novi, half an hour away by school bus, and those were my biggest gaming years. Whoever loves computers becomes a gamer, and whoever becomes a gamer falls asleep around two or three: if the World of Warcraft raid ran until three, I was up until three.

I went through all sorts of phases, some of them truly embarrassing: the gamers, hip-hop with beatboxing in the corridors, rock. In the end I found one friend in each group, and they got me through the rest of school. Around third year, with my first love, I settled down and started thinking about what to study and where my life was going.

Studying in Podgorica: the experience mattered more than the curriculum

There is a joke in Montenegro that parents send their favourite child to study in Belgrade, while the other one stays in Montenegro, and I was the other one. My sister was studying medicine in Belgrade, I knew how much my parents were setting aside for that, and studying abroad was impossible without a scholarship. So in 2010 I started applied computing at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Podgorica, which turned out to be the best decision for me.

To me, Podgorica was Las Vegas, and ideal for a student: you can walk everywhere, and life was cheap. From my second year I prepared first-year students for almost all their exams, which covered my rent, and designed websites for small businesses with no marketing at all, only people saying “Džakula knows how to do that”, so from then on I could support myself.

Universities can’t keep up with technology, and today the gap is huge. Faculties here are years behind, and I can’t recommend anyone to enrol in the studies I finished. The way software is developed this year has nothing to do with last year, while students learn what was current five or ten years ago. Most of what I learned is not directly applicable to my work today, and although it was a good foundation, it didn’t need three years, or five with my master’s.

What I value most is everything that came with studying: independence, finding myself, knowing that all 24 hours of the day were mine, and the friendships for life I made there. In technology, learning never stops, so I spend at least two hours a day on podcasts, articles, security and IT newsletters, and new AI models worth testing.

The beauty of living is in giving

My first professor, and he really was a university professor, was my father, Dr Miroslav Džakula. He kept repeating, and still does: “The beauty of living is in giving, not in taking.” For me it means putting myself in a position where I can give, because putting yourself first is not selfish if the reason is to help your family, your friends or society. That is why I look after my health, career and knowledge: to be the best father, husband, son, friend, colleague and employer I can be.

At university, the professors who inspired me taught with a smile, out of a wish to pass on knowledge. One of them, Veselin, looks like a nerd who never leaves the gym, yet he is the gentlest soul you can imagine. Once he came into a lecture and apologised in advance, because his mother was ill and he would have to step out if his phone rang, and I started to cry. He chose to be vulnerable in front of a full hall of students, with no obligation to do so, and that has stayed with me as the kind of man I want to be.

The University of Montenegro is still my academic home, and together we now run a professional training programme and a scholarship programme. Five students are currently with us in the company, and I guest-lecture in information security courses whenever I can.

Critical thinking as the main skill

Ivan asked what university gave me in the way I think. My whole education, even the subjects I didn’t like, trained my logic, creativity and memory. As an expert I also have to know how technologies evolved, so that I can try to predict what awaits us in ten years, and that has never been harder, because we don’t even know what next year will bring.

I think critical thinking is the main skill education should give you. When a professor sticks to the script and seems out of touch with reality, raise your hand and ask what they think about how things are today. Critical thinking in this sense means getting the maximum value out of your professors and out of a system you spend eight hours a day in.

My first job at Telenor and a chance entry into information security

None of my diplomas ever opened or closed a door, and nobody at a job interview asked to see one. Still, I am glad I finished my studies, because writing my theses taught me research and the scientific method. I started working before I graduated, through a professional training programme at what was then Telenor Montenegro, now One, the most desirable employer at the time. The people were wonderful, but the market is small, budgets were strict, and to progress I would have had to camp there for years, so from day one I was looking at other options.

I actually started on the IT help desk, setting up computers and running cables, hungry for knowledge. The key moment was my colleague Slaviša Karafilić, information security manager for Telenor Serbia and Telenor Montenegro. His engineers sat in Belgrade and he had nobody locally, so he asked me to help install a new antivirus solution on all the computers, then took me aside for a meeting and started talking about security hardening, Kali Linux, protocols and encryption.

I nodded, with no idea what he was talking about, and it would have been the same to me if he had spoken Spanish or French. I hadn’t learned any of it at university, and you could count the security experts in Montenegro on your fingers. I said “Sure, no problem”, and as soon as the meeting ended I started googling everything I remembered, even if I spelled it wrong. My starting point was below zero, at minus who knows how much, and I grabbed the chance with enormous fear, because the alternative was going home when my contract ran out.

That job set my direction, so I chose an information security topic for my undergraduate thesis, among the first, if not the first, on my study programme. I pushed it myself through my specialist and master’s studies, because the faculty had only one course, cryptography, and my master’s thesis was on the Secure Software Development Lifecycle. The professors were enthusiastic and gave me complete freedom. Only since last year has the University of Montenegro had a master’s programme in information security.

“I don’t know, teach me”

Imposter syndrome was terrible, and I kept asking myself whether I was good enough and whether I could do this at all. What helped was that I had been working since I was 14, first on my uncle Stojan’s beach, Svjetionik, then as a waiter and barman in beach bars until university. I worked twelve-hour shifts in jeans and a polo shirt, carrying a tray with 40 degrees outside, so afterwards work discipline never came hard to me, and Telenor felt like paradise.

Because of that I could focus on learning, and I harassed Slaviša with questions. For the first time I started saying “I don’t know”, although in our culture not knowing was shameful. I got over that shame, and then learned how to finish the sentence: “I don’t know, teach me.” I think that once I added that skill to my roster, my career growth was practically unstoppable.

Being someone’s Slavo

We made a roadmap, and my job was to chase, learn and be ready for each next phase. I do the same today with the interns and students who come to us, and we always start by assessing their starting point:

• —Someone who says security interests them but knows nothing about it starts from zero, which is fine, because then I know exactly what they don’t know.
• —Someone who has done labs, Hack The Box, pen-testing projects or bug bounties has already covered a whole area, so we start from there.

I have practised building personalised roadmaps and career paths to grow new people for information security, where the shortage is extreme, and I think I am good at it because of the path I went through. My whole career today perhaps rests on that moment with Slaviša, so I feel an obligation to be someone’s Slavo whenever I get the chance.

It has to be push and pull: whoever comes to learn has to push themselves towards me, and I pull a little, so we build momentum together. In the last few years I have met so many wunderkinds who needed very little from me and were grateful for all of it. What they share is that they never stopped being children: they grew into what they do while keeping the child in them, and that child simply picked up new skills. That childlike curiosity and creativity is what really shines, and I try to keep it in myself and wake it up in others.

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