Blogs

On International Women's Day, I'm proud to celebrate nearly one year of our Women in Cybersecurity series. We launched the series to connect women in the industry and to spotlight their stories with hopes to increase representation in the field. It's been a great year of interviews with security experts and leaders, including company founders, CEOs, researchers, and CISOs, sharing their stories, tips, and resources. 

If you haven't already, I hope you check out the series as every episode is informative and inspiring. My hope was to make the content available in anyone's preferred format; you can read the blog posts, watch the short videos for highlights, and listen to the full audio recordings of the interviews, and I hope you have as much fun hearing these stories as we had doing these shows! Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss a show since there is much more to come!

Here are some of my personal experiences along with key takeaways and highlights from the shows. 

This episode of Women in Cybersecurity features the amazing Tanya Janca, founder and CEO of the We Hack Purple Community author of Alice and Bob Learn Application Security. Tanya is a powerhouse in the application security community, so I was thrilled to talk to her about her passion for sharing knowledge and techniques to advance our field.

This episode of Women in Cybersecurity features Barbie Bigelow, a veteran CIO, cybersecurity executive, board member, advisor, and investor. She is currently CEO of Emerald Growth Partners, LLC, (formerly Better Technology Partners, LLC), which she founded to help clients develop and execute strategic moves while leveraging technology to accelerate growth and increase margins. Clients have included Fortune 500 companies, startup ventures, and non-profits, and she is passionate about sharing her knowledge and increasing the number of women in leadership and board member roles.

Barbie said she got into cybersecurity out of operational necessity; after all, if there is a cybersecurity incident, it affects operations. In her first CIO role at an electronics company, she created a cyber incident response team (CIRT). Since then, she's held roles and advised companies on how to approach cybersecurity in ways to support technological innovation and business needs.

Don't miss her video below, and be sure to check out the full audio interview to learn about her story and her commitments to helping increase the number of women in leadership roles in cybersecurity. 

In this episode of Women in Cybersecurity, I was delighted to interview Helen Patton, an experienced CISO who literally wrote the book on Navigating the Cybersecurity Career Path and is currently CISO for the Cisco Security Business Group. I'm also a longtime follower of hers on twitter where she shares information and resources for security leaders. 

Like many of us, her path to cybersecurity wasn't exactly direct or planned; she says, it was "a series of accidents and unexpected opportunities," where she moved from IT support, to disaster recovery, to cybersecurity. As someone who is passionate about her role and helping others, she is generous in sharing information and advice for other CISOs, as well as bringing more people into our field and helping them thrive. 

Don't miss her video below, and be sure to check out the full audio interview.

Organizations are increasingly moving applications to the cloud to better serve their customers, partners, and employees. The ability to quickly deploy applications to the cloud so employees, partners, and customers can connect to companies for business transactions and services gives organizations a competitive advantage. This makes maintaining security posture more important than ever, as  increasing the availability of products and services connected to company and customer data increases exposure to attacks. Cloud security posture management (CSPM) is key to mitigating security risk while enabling the use of innovative cloud technologies that drive better business results.

This episode of Women in Cybersecurity features Wendy Thomas, President and CEO of Secureworks, a leading cybersecurity company that helps its global customers build effective cybersecurity programs with innovative technology and professional services. With a mathematical background in economics and finance, she found that the field of cybersecurity provides a rewarding trifecta: the opportunity to work globally across cultures and geographies, intellectually stimulating work using innovative technology; and the ability to make a positive impact.

Her leadership includes diversity and inclusion initiatives to reflect the global markets Secureworks serves, and she is an advocate for childhood cyber literacy, starting as early as elementary schools.

Don't miss her video below, and be sure to check out the full audio interview.

My colleague John Grady completed a new research report on Trends in Modern Application Protection. It covers how organizations are modernizing their application architectures and the challenges they are seeing in web application and API protection platforms. In this video, we discuss some of his findings on API security. Watch the video below to learn about:

• The growth of APIs
• Challenges and methods to secure them
• API incidents that organizations have experienced and their impacts
• Methods of remediating API coding errors and their effectiveness
• What to look for in an API protection platform

first met Laurie when we worked together at Qualys, where she was a superstar sales leader who had a technical background. She got her start in tech support, moving into network engineering, and then into cybersecurity roles at VeriSign and SecureWorks. Then she worked at CVS doing vulnerability management before moving to Qualys, where she spent nearly nine years, including serving as Executive VP of Worldwide Field Operations. Now she heads up strategic alliances for Veracode. With her technical background and her understanding of customer needs, she is passionate about helping them solve their biggest cybersecurity challenges with effective solutions. 

Don't miss her video below, and be sure to check out the full audio interview.

This episode of Women in Cybersecurity features Arti Raman, the founder and CEO of Titaniam, an innovative data security company that helps organization protect their data even if they have been infiltrated.

Arti didn't start out in cybersecurity; her education was in economics and math, but when she worked at Agiliance in the area of Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) 12 years ago, she was drawn to solving security problems and decided to put her analytical background to use to solve challenging security problems. She then worked at Symantec, where she tackled enterprise cybersecurity challenges, such as data center security and isolating workloads. Today, she leads her own company, drawing from her past experience of running another successful startup before she got into cybersecurity. Don't miss her video below, and be sure to check out the full audio interview.

This episode of Women in Cybersecurity showcases Brittany Greenfield, the founder and CEO of Wabbi. While Brittany started her career with a degree in biotechnology, working in business process and marketing roles, she turned her focus to cybersecurity, knowing how critical it is in the fabric of technology. Today she leads a company integrating security into software development. Check out our video below, and be sure to check out the full audio interview.