Hello,
My name is Sheryl and I'm a CISSP. 
I passed the exam in September and received my certificate at the end of October. I also have CEH and GCUX certificates. I've never held a job that was strictly a security job, but computer security has been at least 1/4 of my job for over 25 years. I enjoy hands-on work rather than management. I changed jobs this year in search of new challenges, and the new job required one of a few possible certificates. I decided to pursue the CISSP because it has a reputation as being difficult.
My first degree is in Mathematics and I came into the field via engineering, scientific programming and system programming. Although I started out with mainframes and real time minicomputers, my main focus has been UNIX/Linux for most of my career. I like assignments that are hard enough to keep my interest, and I enjoy the detective work that is a large part of systems administration and computer security.
I was well into my career before certification became popular, and like many people from the early days of the open source community certifications weren't a priority for me. I only started going for certificates in the past 5 years, partly because they are becoming important in the hiring process even for UNIX/Linux people, to document my existing skills and show that I can grow and learn new things. I found the CISSP in particular to be an interesting review. There were many things I recognized from early in my career but hadn't used in a while.
I look forward to participating in my new community.
Regards,
Sheryl
