The Everything Feed - All Packet Pushers Pods TNO029: The Power of Curiosity With Michael Costello
May 16, 2025
Michael Costello, a Board Member at NANOG and a Distinguished Engineer at Saviynt, shares his inspiring journey from junior network engineer to cybersecurity leader. He discusses the importance of scalability and automation in network management, along with the evolution of content delivery networks in streaming. Michael emphasizes the significance of curiosity in problem-solving, navigates the transition from CLI to cloud management, and highlights the need for inclusivity in tech education, advocating for skills over degrees.
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Early Career Beginnings
- Michael Costello started his career as a junior network engineer without initial subnet knowledge.
- Early work included attempts at a fixed wireless ISP and redesigning a college network with an MPLS backbone.
Grad School Rootkit Research
- In grad school, Michael worked on Cisco router rootkits by disassembling IOS binaries.
- They tested routers at scale to evaluate stability and hardware integrity while injecting code.
Learning Scale Challenges Early
- Operational scaling issues appear early, such as manual firmware upgrades not scaling beyond dozens of devices.
- Complex engineering problems like timing redundancy in ATM networks helped Michael understand NP-hard problem domains.