Another first

Holy cow, guys!

At my 1:1 with my manager yesterday, I brought up my quarterly goals, which include a shedload of ramping up about cybersec; come the New Year I want to have a path (internal and external) to understanding more about the tech and the practice, because I’m behind. I mentioned that I came across my “90-day onboarding calendar” that they give you and said I hadn’t had time to look at it since I printed it out a month ago, because Stuff.

Then I showed him something I’d captured in a customer call (how they categorize cyber threats); I found it interesting because it doesn’t use the nomenclature that seems to be standard in cyber security, and giving customers the ability (through AI) to map what they’re looking for to the categories we use might be A Thing. And I mentioned something that struck me in an IDC report on one of our competitors: one of their customers uses threat intel to rule out vendors if they show up on the Dark Web. (There was a bunch of Cyber Stuff in the report, but I found that off-label use of the data just fascinating, like pivoting on migraine meds and coming up with Botox.)

Well, we got to talking about Project Brioche and I’d just finished spitballing about the prototype demo that’s coming up in a couple of weeks, and what I see as the next steps when he said, “Going back to the start, we made the right decision.”

It took a while for the Pachinko ball to filter through, but I realized the “right decision” was hiring me. I’d just been pointing out some things that strike me as interesting, and a good part of the reason (aside from just the weird things I find interesting) is that I am not cyber-embedded. I’m looking at it from my own different perspective.

Well, I cautiously recounted what the SVP had told me was the explanation given her as to why I, and not the person with much more cyber experience, was their choice. I told him that that description was true, but what’s remarkable is that they value me because of my differences, not despite them. And this makes me very happy.

He said his position was that they can teach me the tech, and the environment, but that my “new eyes” and ability to articulate what I see is not something just anyone can do.

(It helps, of course, that everyone I work with is supportive, generous and professional—which I told him. There are going to be assholes, but there are none on my team, and none in the greater business unit so far.)

Like many other experiences here, this conversation is a first for me. I love this job.