He started out as a preteen hacker. Now it's his job to stop corporate cyberattacks.

"I was very taken by the hacker community. The people in these chat rooms talked about making programs to perform various tasks. It was a large community, and we would all share information. Some people in it helped me learn how to create internet utility tools, and not all of them were so great."

"For example, when I was 12, I wrote a program that could generate credit card numbers. I then used those cards to purchase commercial software and distribute it for free. It was the coolest thing that I could think of doing at the time."

"I didn't get arrested, but some of my friends did. That encouraged me to change my trajectory."

Chaim Mazal, now chief security officer at Gigamon, began his technology journey at age 8 with his first computer in the early 1990s. He joined hacker chat rooms on Internet Relay Chat and learned to create internet utility tools from the community. At 12, he wrote a program generating credit card numbers to purchase and distribute commercial software. After friends faced legal consequences, he changed direction, pursuing computer science at community college while working in customer support at Microsoft. His early hacking background provided foundational knowledge that helped him pass Microsoft's aptitude test, launching a career in cybersecurity where he now applies his hacker mindset to protect against modern threats.

Read at Business Insider