See Yourself in Cyber

Chapter 8Straight from the Heart (of Cyber)

“There are so many different facets and faces to cybersecurity! And many of the cyber roles don't require programming. In fact, some of my best team members have been history majors, psych majors, criminal justice… A little curiosity is really all it takes!”

—Marnie Wilking, CISO and cyber executive at Booking.com, Wayfair, Wells Fargo, and others

This chapter was both the most difficult and enjoyable to write. It was enjoyable because I got to revisit the many conversations I had and survey results with people who were a major source of input and research for this book. It was difficult because I had to distill tens of thousands of words and data points into a short, cohesive summary—capturing what is nearly 200 collective years of cybersecurity experience among the many people who contributed input. But this is where we see the color wheel in action, sometimes in motion, as people migrate from slice to slice. This information, “straight from the heart” as I named it, is illuminating and illustrative. It provides a lot of context and real-world experiences that are tough to research without a lot of personal conversations.

I organize this chapter into two major sections.

• Summary of key findings: Here I distill the data provided in both surveys divided into topics that I hope you find useful.
  • Getting into the cybersecurity industry
  • Advice from practitioners
  • Overcoming common challenges
  • What hiring managers look for
• Case studies: ...