Donate Time

We recognize that creating a class that's meets OST2's quality standards is a major time investment. But it also leads to major payoffs. It creates more security experts faster than if they have to just thrash their way around unorganized content. Therefore it makes the world better faster. It also shows that beyond just being a subject matter expect, you're also a leader, who cares deeply about making things better. You'll end up building good will and political capital with the hundreds or thousands of students who take your class, all of whom will make up the next generation of security professionals. In so doing you'll raise your stature in the security community, which can lead to better consulting jobs or better employment opportunities. The students you teach will cumulatively go on to do far more good than you could ever do alone. So you'll be achieving your goal as a security professional - actually securing things - on a much more massive scale than you would if you hadn't taught the class and shared your knowledge.

Once you're an instructor, then opportunities for even larger leadership roles also exist if you want to help design not just a class, but an entire learning path, as part of its steering committee.

If you're interested in making a major difference in computer security, then email teach@ost2.fyi and let us know what kind of topic area you had in mind, and approximately how long it would take students to complete your class.

There's a number of places where OST2 could use the touch of the aesthetically inclined.

• Contributing artwork to improve classes, gamifications-badges, etc.

• Creating custom HTML and CSS to make our Open EdX course completion certificates look better.

• Providing corrections to subtitles for classes.

• Xeno also put the learning paths into a neo4j graph database. But then he gave up trying to get it visualized on the website via some javascript visualization mechanism like d3.js. So we could use help from someone who could customize javascript visualizations to provide the kind of collapsible-node, orgthogonal edge, hierarchical graph view of class dependency relationships that we're looking for, instead of static graphs.

Basically if you see something and think "I could help make that look better", then we'd love to get your help with that. Contact us at design@ost2.fyi.

There's lots of ways to help spread the word. Here's a few we've thought of:

• Follow @OpenSecTraining on Twitter or @OpenSecurityTraining2@infosec.exchange on Mastodon. And don't just like tweets, retweet them so that more people hear about OST2 ;)

• Write a blog post about how OST1 or 2 helped you and send it to @OpenSecTraining or @OpenSecurityTraining2@infosec.exchange for us to re-post.

• Include course completion certificates you earn on OST2 in your LinkedIn profile

• Post links to relevant OST2 classes when people ask questions related to topics on other forums throughout the Internet

• Link to OST2 classes from your website, blog, microblog to increase our PageRank

• Nominate OST2 for awards where applicable (e.g. best training website, best security website, etc)

• Give ost2.fyi a shout out at the end of your conference talks

• Spread the word on sites like Facebook where we don't yet maintain a presence

• Advertise OST2 on competing paid platforms ;)

1. At your school

   • Put up flyers advertising OST2 on poster boards in the CS/EE department and then tweet a pic to @OpenSecTraining for us to RT

   • If you think OST2 material is relevant to a class, but your instructor isn’t citing it as background/supplemental/prerequisite material, ask if they’ve seen the relevant OST material and would consider referencing it where appropriate. (That kind of contribution will last beyond single-class posts to class forums and the like.)

2. At your work

   • Include OST2 classes you’ve taken on your resume/CV

   • Post links to class that you think are relevant to your or others’ work to internal mailing lists / chat

   • Talk to your manager about reserving work hours for you to take classes as part of your professional development.

   • Host a team-building event by having multiple people all taking the class at the same time. Discuss the content at hourly 5-minute breaks, and ask each other clarifying questions between the videos as needed. Or have one person each hour ask a trivial question from the material from their own memory (e.g. "What was CR3 bit 1?").'

   • Talk to your manager about paying for an OST2 instructor to provide an in-person class.

3. At security clubs / hackerspaces

   • Host video viewing parties. Sometimes it can be hard blocking off time to go through the classes. Help peer-pressure yourself and others into reserving the time, by scheduling an official time where you all watch the videos, and then discuss the material with each other and any questions you have. See if you can answer each other's questions. And if not, see if the same question is posted on the site already. And if not, post it so you can all find out the answer together.

4. At conferences

   • Give OST2 a shout-out during your talk if it helped with your research, or is relevant to your talk

   • Display OST2 stickers/swag (uh...once we make some...)

5. In paid classes

   • Advertise OST2 somehow ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Maybe mentioning OST2 materials students can take after the paid training to dig even deeper, or to refresh themselves on something that should have been a prereq for the class.

We have some long-term and larger-scale initiatives at OST2 which could benefit from having people focused exclusively on them, for a long time, even if it's not at high effort.

Underrepresented Communities Outreach

World-wide, women make up ~50% of the population, but the cybersecurity workforce men outnumber women 3 to 1. In the US while many companies have published diversity reports and indicated their intention to hire a more diverse workforce, both hispanic and black citizens remain underrepresented relative to their population. But OST2 can help be an equalizer by providing high quality education to everyone for free, and giving people the skills they need to obtain not just entry level jobs, but the significantly higher paying jobs too.

In this role, you'd work with other organizations which are focusing on outreach to underrepresented communities to build strong partnerships. E.g. you'd help ensure their constituents are aware of OST2 as a resource. You'd also seek out instructors to help increase OST2's diversity and representation. 

If you're interested in volunteering in this capacity, email us at represent@ost2.fyi.

University Outreach

While universities tend to focus on foundational skills, OST2 focuses on vocational skills. But the two often go hand-in-hand, and the students who go on to create the best outcomes are those who are strong in both areas. But that means we need to make sure that students at universities are made aware of the availability of the skills taught at OST2, so that they can increase their job prospects. 

A person working in this role would approach both university instructors and student groups to let them know about OST2. Instructors who have classes that are highly aligned with OST2 classes (such as Arch1001, which is based off the most vocationally-relevant portions of a computer architecture class based on the Bryant and O'Hallaron book) would be asked to let students know that supplementary material exists in the form of OST2 classes. And cybersecurity student groups and clubs would be asked to pass down awareness of the OST2 materials from year to year. 

If you're interested in volunteering in this capacity, email us at uni@ost2.fyi.

Charitable Amplification

Do you live in a country other than the US which provides tax benefits to those who donate to charities, but OST2 needs to be registered for citizens to get those benefits? If so, we'd appreciate your help getting OST2 registered, to encourage more donations from folks in that country.

Another simple way to help is by taking a role that looks for and applies for grants to help fund OST2. Helping with this will ensure that our instructors can spend more of their time working on classes, and less time looking for funding.

If you're interested in volunteering in this capacity, email us at champ@ost2.fyi.

Gamification Lead

Training shouldn't have to be boring. And even if learning something (like reading assembly or network packet traces) requires extensive repetition, if it's going to be a grind, we should find a way to make it a fun grind, like in games. Acquiring new skills on OST2 naturally lends itself to an RPG-like experience, as students spend time to gain XP, collect tools to make their lives easier, and level up their technical skills as they climb our skill trees. But what we need is some way to visualize all the progress that a student is making as they go through classes, which is otherwise invisible and abstract. We need a way to visualize their inventory of tools or their current skill level with debuggers or sniffers or configuration managers.

In this role, you'd help us expose and visualize the personal progress that everyone achieves when they go through classes on OST2. You won't be expected to make full videogames or anything like that. We need to start small and utilize existing technologies for things like Mozilla OpenBadges, and provide nicer integrations with Open EdX's admittedly immature gamification efforts. Or we need to find ways to collect and share character attributes like "Debugger Level 2" in Open EdX profiles, and then combine them with formal skill trees which show students what classes they can take to level up in particular skills.

If you're interested in volunteering in this capacity, email us at gamez@ost2.fyi.