Part one of a two-part series
In honor of this week’s theme for Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Explore. Experience. Share. – Cybersecurity Career Awareness Week, we interviewed some of our Guardians about their careers in cybersecurity. See what it’s like to be a Guardian of the Connected World at NETSCOUT and why cybersecurity is a rewarding career path.
Stephanie Busby, Senior Security Compliance Analyst
Tell us about your job. I’d say it’s fun! My role as a compliance analyst has two main parts: the audit side and the education side. The education side is fun to me. It gives me an opportunity share in security awareness with the rest of the company and get others outside of security excited about it. I also like being able to share security awareness with others. NETSCOUT culture in general encourages people to want to learn more about it, and that makes my job easier and more enjoyable.
How is your job related to cybersecurity? To me, cybersecurity means taking measures to protect both my personal and company information. For example, I work hard for my money, so I would hate to have an account drained just because I used an easy-to-guess password! Cybercriminals and technology are getting to be more and more sophisticated, so we must continue to grow and develop good cyber hygiene to avoid data leaks. Part of my role is to educate the whole company on current best practices in cybersecurity for both their professional and personal lives.
How did you get interested in cybersecurity? I started as a high school intern here at NETSCOUT, working for Debby Briggs, NETSCOUT’s chief security officer. She put me on some fun projects that involved spreading security education materials to the company. Before this role I had no idea what cybersecurity even was. After it, I had a much better understanding of cyber hygiene that I was able to also share with family and friends. My interest has just continued to grow and develop from there.
What do you like about working at NETSCOUT? I love working here because NETSCOUT has done a great job establishing a strong, healthy company culture. NETSCOUT makes work-life balance possible. The people I work with are very collaborative and always willing to help. It makes doing a job easier when you enjoy the place you work.
What does being a Guardian of the Connected World mean to you? It means doing my part to keep customer and company information protected.
Any advice for people considering cybersecurity-related careers? Having a good mentor can help you navigate the field, because there are so many different avenues you can go down. Cybersecurity is an ever-growing field and a great place to be.
Rossitza Grozeva, Director, Product Management
Tell us about your job. It is very exciting to me, because I get to learn and work on the newest new technologies in cybersecurity, information technology, and networks across markets and businesses worldwide. We create innovative products that help our enterprise and service provider (SP) customers to manage, optimize, and secure their network and services. Every customer is unique, and creating products that can help a variety of applications and use cases is challenging and rewarding. In my work as a product manager, I am communicating with internal (engineering, marketing, service) and external (sales, customers) teams. I like getting their different perspectives and finding the best solutions.
How is your job related to cybersecurity? The product I work on is called Omnis Cyber Intelligence. It provides unique insights into the baseline of normal operations, suspicious activity, hacker mindset, cyberthreats in action, and anomalous behavior, both in real time and retrospectively. It enables security operations teams to assess the exposure of their network and optimize their defenses. Cybersecurity is important for everyone. In the past cybersecurity was perceived as the responsibility of IT teams. Modern attacks take place on multiple levels. Attackers are using social engineering and people as the resource to gain access and launch attacks.
How did you get interested in cybersecurity? I did the transition gradually. I started my career working on enterprise networks, then moved to monitoring and service assurance for SP networks, and in the last few years, as security became more important and the demand from customers increased, I started working on solutions for enterprise and SP security.
What do you like about working at NETSCOUT? I like the company’s people-oriented culture. NETSCOUT operates on the “lean but not mean” principle driven by our CEO and executive management. The company mission is to seek the best not only for the shareholders and employees, but also for the society. NETSCOUT is a great employer.
What does being a Guardian of the Connected World mean to you? For me, it means solving the toughest problems in the connected world, delivering value to our customers, and working toward the greater good for society.
Any advice for people considering cybersecurity-related careers? Cybersecurity covers a variety of areas—technical/engineering, social engineering, compliance/regulations, risk analysis, legal, and law enforcement. There are multiple career paths they can take.
Learn more about NETSCOUT cybersecurity careers here.