Alicia Backous
I got into cyber …because a leader I worked for recognized that I enjoy solving complex problems and asked me to support a cyber client my firm was working with. I approached the complex problem of cyber by building a diverse team at Guidehouse with backgrounds in cyber but also IT, data, communications, customer experience. […]
Mary O’Brien
As a VET, I got into cyber through…a fundamental need to move data quickly and effectively, both in my professional role and personal life. Professionally, as the military use of unmanned aerial devices for intelligence collection grew exponentially, there was an intense demand to deliver full motion video to customers in near real-time, which required […]
Sarbari Gupta
I got into cyber through…I grew up in Kolkata, India, the daughter of an engineer and a homemaker. My love of math and science drew me to follow in my father’s footsteps. After earning an undergraduate engineering degree at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India, I traveled to the United States to pursue graduate studies […]
Meredith Wallace
I got into cyber through…Cyber found me! I do not consider myself a technical expert, nor is it my passion, and yet we live in a digitalized world where cyber threats and opportunities are ubiquitous. I found my way into cyber working in national security and was recruited by an executive who offered me an […]
Jeffrey Mims
I got into cyber…as a byproduct of building software in the early 90s, before personal computers had any security to speak of. I really enjoyed writing encryption software, something I came back to several times in my career. Several years later, I was working on networks where the profound lack of security was more obvious, […]
Crystal Hartman
I got into cyber through…My journey into cybersecurity began in 2018 during my previous role—ironically, as a customer of Haystack Solutions. Cyber wasn’t a career path I had ever considered, and to be honest, my first year felt like an uphill battle. Trying to make sense of the 1s and 0s, endless acronyms (APT, TTPs, […]
Michael C. Dickey
How did you get into cyber…I stumbled into cyber partway through my Coast Guard career. Although my degrees are in Electrical Engineering, and I spent much of my career on ships, I moved through a few jobs in IT to a position where I was responsible for the Coast Guard’s IT infrastructure. The cybersecurity challenges […]
Dr. Joseph J. Burt-Miller Jr.
I got into cyber…before I knew what cyber was. My uncle exposed me to IT while growing up in NY. He lived in NJ at the time, so I always enjoyed the mini-road trips to visit. He worked in IT at the time and taught me a lot from watching him work on keyboards, PC […]
Cristine Gollayan
I got into cyber through…I started out as a Software Engineer coding COBOL to prepare for Y2K. I learned about the entire software development lifecycle in a very large company and I believe it was this technical foundation that allowed me to enter a small private cybersecurity firm and understand the security concepts and foundation […]
Debora A. Plunkett
I got into cyber…while working at the National Security Agency, where I worked on both the intelligence and the defensive (cyber) missions for over 30 years. For me, a positive cyber mindset is…curious, collaborative, probing, innovative, hopeful but realistic. The work experience that helped me transition to a career in cyber was…two-fold. First, a tour […]