Fatima: A day in the life of a detection and response team manager
1. Fatima: A day in the life of a detection and response team manager
My name is Fatima, and I'm a tech lead manager on Google's detection and response team. My role at Google requires me to stay up to date with the cybersecurity threat landscape and make decisions about what we need to build so we're in a good position to detect any cyber attacks against Google or Alphabet. It took me a while actually to get to cybersecurity and to understand that was the place I wanted to go. When I was in high school, I got the opportunity to work in a law firm, really making copies. Like, my job was, I was called a copy kid because I was a kid who made copies, and at one point I just started working with their IT systems and just trying to fix things here and there when things would break. We would have people who would lose important work documents or really cherished family photos. So I was exposed to that part of cybersecurity, the very human part, right, that it's not just a nuisance that somebody experiences on their computer, but it can really affect them in a different way. At that point in my life, I decided that cybersecurity was something that I wanted to pursue professionally. I wanted to fight the bad guys on the internet. Cybersecurity is like a performance. It's something that you prepare for for a long time, and then one day, it's time to put on the show. You have to be ready. You have to be ready to perform, and you have to be ready to perform at your best. For somebody who's just starting a career in cybersecurity, I would say learn how to code. Coding is extremely important, and learn the basics. Learn about networks. Learn about operating systems. Learn about web vulnerabilities. So learn all the fundamentals really well, and then after that, decide really what you want to focus on. What I've learned in my career is that nobody has a magic recipe for success. Everybody's just trying their best, and they're trying to figure it out in the moment. You might think that this other person just knows better and they have some magical skill that makes them more fit to do this type of work. I'm going to tell you that doesn't exist. The only thing that exists is really hard work and learning and developing your skill sets, and eventually you get better, and you kind of move on to that next phase of your career or your life. But there isn't, nobody has that kind of magical recipe and knows all the answers. Everybody's really just trying their best.2. Let's practice!
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