Tribe of Hackers

19Winnona DeSombre

“In fact, the industry greatly benefits from hiring people of differing backgrounds, precisely because crafting solutions to difficult and nuanced problems in this space requires differing opinions.”

Twitter: @__winn • Website: www.linkedin.com/in/winnonadesombre

Winnona DeSombre is an Asia-Pacific threat intelligence researcher at Recorded Future, focusing on Chinese underground hacking communities and East Asian cyber-espionage campaigns. Previously, she updated legacy systems in government software at MITRE and MIT Lincoln Laboratory and conducted policy research at the Harvard Belfer Center. In recent years, Winnona spoke at the Forbes Under 30 Summit and TEDxTufts, won the Harvard Belfer Center’s D3P Information Operations Technical and Policy Hackathon, and was a semi-finalist in the Atlantic Council’s Cyber 9/12 competition.

If there is one myth that you could debunk in cybersecurity, what would it be?

The myth that individuals who work in cybersecurity are all one type of person. Cybersecurity is a wide field with many different types of jobs and consists of individuals from various backgrounds. In fact, the industry greatly benefits from hiring people of differing backgrounds, precisely because crafting solutions to difficult and nuanced problems in this space requires differing opinions. However, because so many people believe they need to fit ...