Jacob studied computer engineering at the University of Pretoria - in his final year's studies in 2022, he focused on a cybersecurity topic, oriented around developing and analysing how ransomware spreads across Active Directory networks via various deployment techniques. This initially sparked his interest in cybersecurity, which led to applying for the MWR internship. After the internship, he took up the role as a new joiner the following year and has since branched out from application security to network and cloud security, specialising in AWS.