Interview With a Cybersecurity Professional

There are risks in our cyber world. Let us break it down and try to comprehend a world we do not know very well. It would not be easy to find a person who does not use the Internet in some way almost daily. I admit that I use the internet daily for hours each day. I had questions about Cybersecurity, so I interviewed a Cybersecurity professional. He has worked with American and Canadian companies.

Here are the questions and his response to them.

Interview questions: 

1. How long have you worked in cyber security?  • Answer: Approximately five years.

2. What influenced you to work in cyber security?  • Answer: My college professor helped me figure out what I wanted to do as a career because I realized that software engineering wasn’t the thing for me. She mentioned that ethical hacking was a thing that piqued my interest.

3. Cybersecurity is so broad.  What surprised you most about Cybersecurity when you first started working after college?

• Answer: It is so broad that figuring out what area you want to focus on can be challenging. Another thing is that the path to getting into Cybersecurity, or a specific area, isn’t quite linear. For example, it is not like going to school to become a doctor, nurse, or similar.

4. Is there any area of Cybersecurity that you would like to explore for a possible future career? Why?

• Answer: I thought about malware development, which led me to take a course and pass an exam to introduce myself to it. However, I see that it requires too much effort and time, and I don’t feel it’s worth my time at the moment, while it would be best for me to focus on other areas of interest, specifically in my current pen-testing role.

5. What do you think would surprise the average American in terms of cybersecurity?

• Answer: Most organizations do not have a cybersecurity response plan in case of a cyber attack, but also companies can sometimes take an average of six months to detect a data breach. On a similar note, I think what’s frustrating is that sometimes you can show a client a critical vulnerability, and they might not desire to fix it.

6. Do you speak any languages other than English? What?

• Answer: I am conversationally fluent in Russian and currently working on getting to an intermediate level in French.

7. How does your knowledge of languages assist you in Cybersecurity?

• Answer: in my current role, it doesn’t help me but allows for more job opportunities. On the other hand, it’s cool to understand and read documents that malicious actors created. For example, there was a leak of documents that a known Russian hacking group used, which were documentation written in Russian. So comprehending them without much need of a translator feels pretty satisfying.

End of Interview

~ A. Cross