By Ashley Burke, Information Security Program Manager
I can’t believe it’s been two years already! I feel like I just entered the cybersecurity field yesterday! Today I am an Information Security Program Manager for a fintech, and it’s been a wild ride, full of learning curves, second-guessing myself and gaining my confidence. I will say this, ever since I entered this field, I truly understand my self-worth!
Before my time in security, I worked in several different jobs. I was a University Instructor teaching political science and social justice. I worked in a Career Resource Center doing several different roles, helping people with disabilities find employment opportunities.
When we look at these jobs, we don’t always see their relation to cybersecurity. However, they are all related, and I leveraged them to get my foot in the cybersecurity door.
Looking at my time working in non-security roles, I gained a wide variety of skills, which I later found out were extremely useful. Let me go over the top 3 skills I used to enter cybersecurity.
- Networking: I taught others the value of networking to identify employment opportunities and potential careers. I put these strategies to work for myself. I developed a supportive network that worked with me to achieve my first gig in the industry.
I met these people in a variety of ways, including online conferences, social media and friends of a friend. Once I had these contacts, I kept up to date with them, messaging them with check-ins, questions and so on.
It was through this network that I managed to identify mentors in the field, who worked with me to sharpen my skills and ultimately find a career in the industry.
- Listening: As I began my career change, I had to recognize that I didn’t know a lot of the terminologies or processes involved in cybersecurity. When I started networking, I would ask questions to experts in the field and would listen to what they told me.
If they said my resume needed work, I worked on it. If they suggested I gain knowledge on malicious actors, I went and found a free course on it.
I recognized that if I was going to be successful in this field, there would be a huge learning curve, and I was going to have to hang on tight and lean into what I didn’t know.
From taking advice and listening, I was able to navigate the biggest career change of my life and succeed in it!
- Self-Love: This is really important and a skill that we all have access to, but it can sometimes be hard to come by.
Even the best of us have self-doubt. When I was making this change, I questioned my ability to be truly happy and make my mark on the industry. I thought, “Well I have to be technical; I can’t use certain software or do a pen test. How could I be useful in this field?”
I know now that didn’t matter for me because as I grow in the industry, I can learn technical things. Once I figured out that crapping on myself wasn’t helping, I started giving myself breaks when I would achieve something, and I started talking about how proud I was of my accomplishments, even if they were small.
Self-love helped build up my confidence and push negative Ashley into the background. However, in this process, I did start wondering, is being a woman the reason I have so much doubt in myself?
I concluded, yes, this is the main reason for me. I was never told STEM was an option for me. In fact, when I was in high school, I was told to be a social worker or a teacher. They are the jobs for you, my guidance counsellor said to me.
Once I realized that being a woman was not a disadvantage for me, my self-love grew exponentially. It started to shine in my self-confidence, in my discussions, in my network, in my resume, and ultimately landed me my first job with no formal training!
You must be wondering, what is the purpose of telling you about these three skills? The reason is that we all have amazing attributes that work for us, and leveraging them to make a positive change for yourself is absolutely doable!
It is about some hard work and some investigation, and you can learn some things, grow and change a little bit!
Through my self-doubt, my career hardships, bad managers, good managers, depression, happiness, rain and sunshine, I came out knowing that I had achieved my goal and made the best change for me.
I may not be technical (yet), but do you know what I am…..eager! I am eager to keep going, accomplish goals, learn more about my talents and, most importantly, keep kicking ass!