Security Expert Advises San Francisco Students To 'Think Big Picture'
The recent news of the cyber-attack on Sony is just another example of how critical it is to have information security analysts on a company's payroll. With many leading tech companies based in San Francisco, such as Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Salesforce - job growth for information security analysts will continue to outpace most other professions in America. For career advice, Lauren Park, Senior Technical Program Manager for Adobe's Security Coordination Center in San Francisco, talks about what it takes to protect companies from security risk.
What is your background and education?
At Adobe, I work with a team that coordinates both network and product security incident response across the company. After graduating with a B.S. in Computer Information Systems and B.S. in management, I began my career in quality engineering. This role required me to think outside the box and figure out how to make software fail, which was something I found extremely rewarding, and for which I developed a career passion. I pursued my passion for engineering further when I began developing automation solutions to more efficiently detect software bugs, and I eventually took a role at Intuit, managing application security, performance and automation tools for a large financial services solution. It was here where I saw my core passion evolving in a new direction - security. This newfound interest for security eventually led me to my current role at Adobe."
How has your education helped you in your career?
"Most challenges companies face are either organizational, technical, or quite commonly, both. Having a blend of technical and management degrees has given me the tools to understand the lower level technical details and think through creative solutions. The ability to communicate with technical and non-technical audiences is a key skill in bridging communication gaps between different facets of a company, and something that has helped me immensely working with the SCC."
What career advice can you offer to students interested in a career in information security?
"Think big picture. Focusing on how pieces of a complex system work together, and how that complexity might represent an inherent security weakness, or an exploitable condition, is a more interesting challenge with far bigger stakes. Obtain a solid foundation of computer science and architecture fundamentals to provide that big picture understanding, and from there, pursue a more specialized security program."
Randy Yagi is a freelance writer covering all things San Francisco. In 2012, he was awarded a Media Fellowship from Stanford University. His work can be found on Examiner.com Examiner.com.
