Panel on Building and Leading Talent in CyberSecurity

so to kick us off these guys but I would love them to do an introduction share with us who they are what they are what they don't daily basis then we cannot eat this starting with the lady on my rights um good afternoon my name is Christine Van Buren I am an information security Analyst at Dimension data um I'm also a content manager I'm also appointment manager at Seahawks Kenya what I've done earlier today basically I'm up intima so I monitor the network for clients for any suspicious activities and I also perform intellectual response and memory forensics I hope you are having a lovely day and just a little bit introduction of myself I'm in one of the co-founders of Shiraz scale and I believe most of us here are members of the same and they've been able to learn more about cyber security based on the programs we have and then also I'm a program manager Cloud Security customer experience Engineering in Microsoft technical expound more about that as we talked today [Music] I am Chris basketball most people call me CK I am currently the director of vehicle Innovation Hub so previously I was mostly a technical person but it's becoming harder I do a lot of research and development and hopefully the balance between the two will continue and hopefully I can be able to answer questions on both sides [Music] good afternoon my name is Brian yali I work as a principal risk consultant for Syrian primary leading digital forensics and incident response for online security services and also for any other Consulting clients good afternoon good afternoon how is the land how was it yeah and thank you very much for watching us here it doesn't mean that you are Advanced maybe it means that we are ready to share some of our experiences I am Frederick I founded segments back in 2009 which I still lived where we provide cyber security and also for instance also back in 2015 we founded Kenya cyber security forensic Association basically you also have a number of members here where we bring together professionals so that we can have such discourses and because I might quote a scripture along the way it is good to declare but I also love Jesus do you do that okay thank you so much [Music] so first question to you guys my use of the questions we are going to have will actually be coming from you I'll probably have maybe two or three questions that they don't know so that he gets genuine experience physical surprises on their faces you see those so just to us oh something I wanted to add [Music] I don't think we have a 10v here my apologies for that it could have been very very loudly also get that perspective from an employer as an employee for interviews but all of these girls I believe from interaction with them at different professional levels they are probably going through some of the challenges most of us are a few of us are going through troubling going through some challenges that some of us are going through so use that opportunity to ask meaningful and living questions it's going to be very rare to get this amazing guy in one athletes so my first question is going to go to 800 Millions who can keep who should respond to the first question anyone yes favorite thank you [Music] yes what you wish you knew before from this point from your career drivers on everything you've learned what you wish you actually knew before which might have trouble influenced or changed your career trajectory between perspectives with a change of career from being technical core fantastic or the psychops engineer I'm now doing more like on the sales side of the security products in Microsoft so I wish I knew that one day I'll start having customer conversations and things like that shown from from a technical perspective so joining in is where now I started learning them out of how do you speak to customers like literally how do you face everything that you have to speak so I wish I knew that before as it's been almost it took me about almost three months in the role to get to learn all that and literally it's something each of us should be able to appreciate the second one [Music] it looked so hard to me and that's what I do now is there an option no literally have a chance to appreciate in the other field and by the point aim the security space thank you so much it's about to say karma is Hammer try to run for me second question still that same question Brad what you wishing you before um might not be a bit different from what she said what I wish I knew before is stop trying to chase a lot like balance before you put in the work you don't get to that balance before you've gone through the changes expounds are you you're spam so early on in my career I started out at a different organization and we worked with Lawrence back then when you're still doing networks then after networks they moved into systems after systems security and there's a time a threat was one of them were giving me sleepless nights when we're managing DNS for the cctld so with the time most of my colleagues left and I was left in the technical team alone [Music] is not a very easy thing so barely sleeping making sure things are running then immediately after that I really wanted a walk-life balance I want to have time to do my own things and time for work etc but I hadn't realized that you have to really go through the trenches put in the work become really good at what you do for you to get to that other side of the way around you can enjoy that point of that balance but before you put in the work there's no balance yet thank you so much let's jump to CK what you wish to knew before earlier I'm going to talk about the technical technical so for the technical uh the one major thing is that the basics matter and by the basics I mean that means with not when as if so if you are doing a different event I didn't think I would why they really need to learn those low-level languages so I wish I had learned to them then it's easier to learn when you are younger I think it's the same with all types of languages both spoken with according ones so they are going to start the adventure so a lot of those languages that you want to learn right now run those Basics read those PDFs the ones that tell you what is actually happening the restaurant companies because what you find is much better you want to do something then you have to take a break from your children to go take one month you learn a language just to be able to do what you're doing so learn those basics in whatever area then that technical is what gets your father in life now a lot of the time it's not going to be your skill unfortunately a lot of the times it will be visibility visibility could be who you know and as unfortunately that's the truth so know as many people as you can you can't convince them using your interpersonal skills convince them with your work because that's another way of networking Network present I see people joining ETF teams do all that stuff and your start determines a lot if you start up at a very low pay scale you may never reach to our goal you want to reach so try to secure your networking at the barrier instead thank you so much CK Christian um for me to be uh go for what you want and no matter how fearful you are about the circumstances that you will come out of it uh for example change change is something that scares out of us one way or another um but sometimes change is good and sometimes you putting in that effort for you then that is what will make the difference that is what will make you stand out also if you have the opportunity of putting yourself out there please do because um it is not easy for you to go to a workplace and start trying to do who you are or you may get employed right now and you have to start proving who you are what you can do and all that you can do it a retinal Authority for example she asks us a platform where you can write articles and share on it with the community that is actually something that you can do to just it benefits you and it should also benefit from thank you when a friend [Music] for this deep in thought what you wish you knew earlier okay hi thank you thank you thank you very much [Music] I I wish I knew that it was hard because I think I got it those people and before starting a company right from the University I I never knew that there are additional skills that I needed apart from the technical skills so getting out of the University is the computer science skills like that skills service kids they be mentality and they found out after three years almost I could not generate any income so I had to rethink and go back and partake our seeds at the marketing course that was not enough I had to go back again to seek for customer relationship starts so I had to vacate the technical skills for almost another one to two years if I knew but maybe I could have solve those skills another one in relationship to the association considering that we are not as related to like a global organization we wish we knew what we were getting ourselves because we came to realize that the team was was trapped up you needed so many things we have never managed people like different people very smart people some of them they are smarter than you so but now you are here the association is running people you are managing are serious but they don't seem like they are serious if we leave their Association so if there was a way that we would have no one maybe somehow like for me I would not have you know I would maybe have waited for some some more years and the last one I I also like my sister said has said that relationships so I never valued I never used to Value relationships during the first two three years but it is the relationships and it is about it's not about quantitative uh uh I mean the quantity of relationships you have it is the quality one person can open a door for you for instance in safarical but you have to package yourself before you get access to those people the problem which you're going to really discuss is a because you're very proud because you can attach a Linux commands you don't value the other person who does not know Linux and that person is the one who will hold your heart to the place where you are going to practice the alliance commands thank you uh thank you so much [Music] now [Music] also answers I think as a I checked one thing I wish I knew earlier was getting used to rejection and not taking personality character development if given that on that personal level but a lot of the things you want you're probably not going to get them in the first try you have you have to kiss many throws so you try the right program even even in work especially for those who are going guys who are going to join the workforce workplace get used to those cities being rejected don't let it slow you down let it puke you off your rejected me look tell yourself for telling me to tell yourself cry internally stay a loss but you need to keep moving on don't let that rejection slow you for too long it's okay to be I'm happy sad for not for my day a few days a few hours but you still need to keep going now as a manager what do I wish I knew earlier how many billion managers team leads managing teams it will be good to also share your serious because I see some team leads that I worked with right here if we had 10 o'clock you have been very good to share your experience as I think this is a manager one of the things I wish I knew earlier was to take advantage over delegation being able to delegate some of your responsibilities and empowering those people to be able to do those responsibilities to that base over their abilities I think that's one thing I wish I knew earlier when also being very open and very free with your team to the point that you enable them grow if you are lucky within within your company if you are luckier outside the company so empowering your people just not to be all around you but giving them enough tools for them to even exhale somewhere else back to our next question so if I could start with a ram this well it's personal then it's better what are those what are some of those professional challenges you are currently facing and how you working your way through them whatever your comfortable sharing out um one of the big challenges I'm facing at the moment was um initially on the spot of a sock team and helping build the soft team up and threat hunting and also merging that with forensics and incident response now that moved into risk the main challenge with risk is you'll always be facing clients day in Day Out the days you'll meet clients who question your capabilities the right off the bat and someone who will come but you aggressively and Devils will be very polite and easy to work with so learning how to relate with people and work with them is one tough and to see business opportunities from engagements is a very tough thing you know previously business coming into the organization and you're happy because you know that's your salary being paid but when now you're tasked with those opportunities seeking them out and following through that's that's big on what you've been yelling here in terms of the interpersonal skills and learning how to do business how to do follow-ups with people and seeing those things too so that's one of my biggest challenges at the moment how I'm going through it learning from people reaching out to people who have been there ahead of me learning how to own those skills and engage with people of even business related models thank you [Music] um professional challenge and see as a as a woman you I constantly have to prove myself in a room so for example if let's say you have a meeting with someone you have to constantly prove that you can do it or that you suit the job so that is one of the challenges that's professional okay it's not professional kind of but it's it can it sometimes affects my uh my work because you let it get into your head and it's at the end of the day you are proving whatever that speak whatever that person told you you're putting the rights so what I'm doing to to work on it is to shut everyone off [Music] example if I come into a meeting and I explain something once I'm done if you have any comments anything but you take it you're getting it works so I won't I don't at least you're giving me um constructive criticism constructive criticism yeah unless it's that then I don't need comments I think that's one of the challenges I am hugely facing courage thank you so much for the record I happen to work with Christian at some point she is a an amazing brilliant among the best assault people person actually working she's actually really good if [Music] my idea and just to add something else be transparent in everything that you do the art of employing transparency to the things that you do the art of working a lot with customers you just be honest with them mostly As I tend to feel like I might get this based on the conversation I'm having with them so it's it's good to be candid with the different customers that you're working with on the journey that you have and then additionally to that aside from that is the part of emotional intelligence a conversation might be so hard at some point some of us love crying so you literally might end up being so emotional emotion and you are not able to manage that so literally learning that I took emotional intelligence how can I cool down it's the worst time how do I am I able to respond connect to your correct a correct manner because at times when when you deal with emotions I think maybe women here in the room I don't know if you feel fat but you might really passed out and make a very wrong response to something so literally learning the art of emotional intelligence and how to manage difficult conversations [Music] professionally unfortunately for me I am I was promoted recently to the position of director so I have to start to worry about things I hope to start worrying about this that you never just worry about before then I basically had every hour of the day to myself to do whatever research I wanted to do other days I have to worry about budgets for other people will get paid we are in a transition period where I can have convinced someone that yes we can get people paid value I think people need about restructuring and so on and so forth you never get to realize what the reality of you're the one who is being told you you have to do it so this is such as that uh the professionals I think people should prepare themselves at some point in their life to start dealing with that start dealing with budgets on a personal level for those who are already dealing to think it's a good place to practice uh the the other thing that is a mixture of the professional and their personalities style so time goes away I think I can live with a quote that I was given by my outgoing director to prepare me when he told me that at some point someone will call you in the middle of the night about uh one person is in the hospital about the river and you have to deal with it so it's no longer attack so I hope that as people create the technical Fields they also start growing in there other than their non-technical aspects thank you thank you um a number of challenges professionally the first one being in the perspective [Music] of managing people actually working with people now from the organization perspective considering that we are in entrepreneurship and that if we do not look for money no one you are not going to expect money from anywhere government is not going to give you money and people and this money must come from a business that you have transacted um so managing trying to manage relationships especially with the on holding new customers it is very tough especially now when we talk of cyber security why our competitors are the big organizations and they have built trust over years we have the rights of PWC we have KPMG we have lots of Alexis safaricom so someone will be very much and very easily convinced when they are presenting The Proposal from let's say PWC uh and when we walk into such a room from a secular Technologies they they still have a doubt so they turn around for a new business it can even take up to six months and uh there are different expectations so another one is managing now the people because when you get a business for instance I know I'm speaking to someone here who will get into entrepreneurship and eventually you're in the employment you are going to translate Maybe to having your own business so you have a business they have an expectation in terms of this they Clash sometimes Kenyan customers they don't pay on time they pay less they have over expectations and when they pay more they also want 10 percent and you see so do you give this person a dead person because they are giving you a business is that apply or is it an appreciation who can answer that we put ourselves into a challenge sometimes we want our business and we we say let us appreciate this person with 10 percent and they told us you see you are now bribing us are we together so those are some of the other challenges and also in regard to the generation the dimension Z and I think as their EX actly like working together being in the same perspective but one thing we have done is to allow critical thinking you do not have to follow all that's like some legalizing point of view no you can come up with your own things as long as they are going to add value to you and they also going out to value and also to our growth so those are some some of the key challenges yeah thank you for the managers in the house or team leads what are some of the challenges I'm struggling with I think I'm more or less figure them out doing what is right for your team and doing what's right for the company you had unreal that they talk over he'll die for your stream if you see if if it's a bonus