My curiosity for the technical details and desire to be a protector is what led me to this profession. I became interested in cloud security because every time I heard someone say that their company was “going all in on the cloud”, I always wondered how they were going to secure everything they put into the cloud. I wanted to be part of the solution that defends the customer and makes the world a little safer.

The first exposure I had to the security field was when the WikiLeaks events first occurred. I was a senior in high school and we were discussing hacking in one of my classes. I became very curious and decided I wanted to learn more about the security field in college. I was a computer engineering/computer science double major at the University of Virginia. My first exposure to the cloud was during my second semester of my senior year, where I took a cloud computing class. I loved the concept of cloud computing, the benefits it provides developers, and how it can help make technology more accessible to the world. I was excited to start working in the industry and start learning how to integrate security into the cloud.

Almost every industry increasingly relies on various forms of technology for their daily operations. Thus, it’s become critical to consider security. All of our information is online and bad actors are constantly looking for ways to expose this information. Not only do we need more people in security to help prevent this from happening, the security industry also needs people from a variety of backgrounds so that there is a diverse thought process in developing solutions. Malicious actors are creative; we need diverse viewpoints so that our solutions are equally or more creative.

Each day is very different which makes work exciting. Typically I have a stand up with my team in the morning to discuss my ongoing work and address any impediments. I work with development teams to design cloud-native solutions and provide security requirements and best practices for environments and workflows established on public cloud platforms. One example is that I analyze infrastructure code to ensure there are no security gaps in the infrastructure implementation. When I’m not working with other software developers, I write code to build the various internal cloud security tools at the company.

My advice to someone starting out in security or the cloud is to read thought leadership from industry leaders, go to meet-ups and talk to other people about their work, and try to be as hands-on as possible. It’s important to remain positive and not be intimidated. Remind yourself that you have the skills to overcome any challenge. Be confident, believe in yourself, and trust your intuition.