A new guide featuring the experiences of 16 women working in cyber threat intelligence (CTI) is challenging the idea that professionals need a conventional technical background to enter the field. Published by threat management company Filigran, Women in CTI: The Careers, Lessons, and Stories Shaping Cyber Threat Intelligence explores career paths spanning marketing, political science, counterterrorism, recruitment, game development, engineering and theatre.
The contributors include women who entered cybersecurity after working in other industries, returning from career breaks or pursuing entirely different ambitions. One spent ten years raising her children before discovering an interest in security, while another competed as a semi-professional cyclist for seven years before moving into technology.
Cyber threat intelligence involves investigating cyber adversaries, understanding their motives and methods, identifying potential targets and turning that knowledge into intelligence organisations can use to strengthen their security decisions.
While technical expertise remains important in many CTI roles, the guide highlights the value of transferable skills such as curiosity, research, critical thinking, communication and problem-solving. It argues that bringing together people with different professional and personal experiences can produce stronger and more useful intelligence.
Giving Women in CTI a Greater Voice
The initiative was created by Mary D’Angelo, Senior Solutions Lead at Filigran, and Einat Argon, Manager, Customer Success at Filigran. The pair said they had noticed a gap between the number of talented women working in threat intelligence and their visibility within the wider professional community.
“Women in CTI really started from something pretty simple. In the intelligence-sharing Slack channels we were part of, we noticed that very few women were contributing to the conversations,” said D’Angelo. “We knew women were doing incredible work in this field, but their voices and knowledge were not always showing up in the places where intelligence was being exchanged.”
Argon said she had observed a similar pattern when meeting customer threat intelligence teams, where women were often underrepresented or hesitant to contribute despite possessing significant expertise. The pair initially began co-authoring articles with women working in CTI to raise the profile of their knowledge. The new eBook expands the initiative by allowing 16 professionals to describe their careers and experiences in their own words.
Among the contributors is Maril Vernon, Field CISO at Horizon3, who entered cybersecurity at 30 following a career that included marketing, wedding planning and IT recruitment.
Natasha Eastman, Head of Threat Intelligence at CoreWeave, began her career in counterterrorism before working for a Californian wine importer and later spending almost seven years at the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Cybersecurity researcher Cheryl Biswas returned to the workforce after ten years raising her children, having become interested in the industry after reading about the Stuxnet malware.
Mentorship and Human Judgement
Alongside their routes into the profession, contributors discuss the importance of mentorship and giving opportunities to candidates whose potential may not be reflected by conventional experience or qualifications. The guide also considers how CTI is changing, including the growing use of artificial intelligence and the continued importance of human judgement, communication and collaboration.
“Ultimately, I want Women in CTI to make the entire profession stronger, more open, more collaborative and better at sharing the intelligence that helps all of us defend against threats,” D’Angelo concluded. “Being women may initially be what connects us, but what we contribute to the broader CTI community is a much higher purpose.”
Women in CTI: The Careers, Lessons, and Stories Shaping Cyber Threat Intelligence is available now and includes conversations covering career development, mentorship, AI and the lessons contributors wish they had known when entering the field.
