CyberWire Daily - Anjali Hansen: Cross team collaboration works best. [Privacy Counsel] [Career Notes]

Episode Date: September 4, 2022

Anjali Hansen, a senior privacy counselor from Noname Security shares her story as she climbed through the ranks to get to where she is toady. When Anjali started she wanted to do international law. She started working for the International Trade Commission after law school which is where she was able to gain most of her experience and gain real world abilities. Working with online fraud and abuse, she shares, concerned her because it felt like governments could not protect organizations from threats occurring, which is how she got interested in cyber crime. From there, she moved to Noname Security and working there she found that she is working with every group in the organization, creating a cross team collaboration and how much she admires that type of model. She says "We have to help other departments protect the data because the data's throughout an organization, it's in HR, it's in sales and marketing, it's in IT, it's in finance. So you have to be able to work with all these teams." We thank Anjali for sharing her story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the Cyber Wire Network, powered by N2K. and VPNs, yet breaches continue to rise by an 18% year-over-year increase in ransomware attacks and a $75 million record payout in 2024. These traditional security tools expand your attack surface with public-facing IPs that are exploited by bad actors more easily than ever with AI tools. It's time to rethink your security. Thank you. Learn more at zscaler.com slash security. Hello, my name is Anjali Hanson. I'm Senior Privacy Counsel at No Name Security. I was pretty sure that I wanted to do something international. I had traveled a bit and my parents both came from other countries and I had family all over the world and I just like different cultures. So I knew I wanted to do something international, but I wasn't sure what.

sure what. And I think because the expectation was that I do something, you know, at a higher education level, I settled on law fairly early on in my undergraduate career. And I became pretty dedicated to pursuing that path. All I knew was that I wanted to do international law, and I was somewhat naive as to what that entailed. But once I got to law school, I saw the different types of fields that were available in international. I went to Georgetown because it's pretty well known for international law, had a pretty good curriculum for international law. And I took all sorts of different classes. So I started to see that that would be a good area where there's a fair amount of legal work in international trade. So that's where I ended up right out of law school. trade. So that's where I ended up right out of law school.

I did a lot of work at the International Trade Commission, which is a U.S. independent agency out of law school. And as a young attorney in the government, you're afforded a lot of responsibility that you wouldn't get. One of my favorite cases was roses from Colombia and Ecuador. There were a lot of imports coming in that was flooding the market at the time, and the U.S. industries were being injured by the lower prices of those roses. So we really investigated the impact of imports on the industries that were being affected by different types of products coming in. I learned so much. I learned a lot about steel because there was a lot of steel cases. But I went to a different agency, which was the U.S. Trade Representative's Office, which is the arm of the Office of the President that handles trade

violations. And I got into more intellectual property infringement when I was there. There were a lot of different counterfeiters, piraters of U.S. goods and other intellectual property. and other intellectual property. There was more work than could ever be done. We were working long, long hours there. And then I got to be more involved on the more criminal side of things when I was at USTR with the intellectual property violations. One of my most interesting projects while I was there was

working with the recording industry of America and the Motion Picture Association. There was a lot of pirating occurring internationally. And there was this one big operation occurring in Bulgaria. And we did it. We had a delegation go there because we were getting nowhere trying to negotiate with the government. There's so much crime happening on the Internet, just as we couldn't really catch all these piraters back then because they would just pop up in new locations. It's like that, that there's so much fraud and crime happening and copying of trademarks and copyrighted works on the Internet. abuse really made me just concerned with the fact that it felt like governments couldn't really protect organizations from all the threats that are occurring. And I was very interested in cybercrime because when I was at the Business Association, there was so much online abuse occurring against that organization's trademarks and domains and websites.

They were the target of one of the largest phishing campaigns at the time. Thousands and thousands of emails spoofing the brand went out. And I even was able to work with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to try to combat the incessant barrage that was happening against this one organization. It just really felt, you know, like probably so many people out there, just powerless against all of the crime that's occurring, that each organization has to be their own fortress, have their own security army, and to protect themselves because the government is just not able to keep up. So I really became interested in helping organizations with this issue because I just feel like we don't have anywhere else to turn to.

The government's a little bit impotent in this regard. They do great work, but they cannot keep up with everything. And so a company like No Name Security developed this really good cybersecurity product that I think is really beneficial to organizations. They're being used en masse by many organizations. I just was really impressed with the product and it's a startup and there was an opportunity to work with the compliance team at NoName and I thought it was a really worthwhile company to work for. it's very collaborative I think you know being in compliance you're maybe somewhat of a threat to other departments possibly because you know you might uncover something but I try to do it

more in an educational way like you, you know, here's resources, training is really important. We have to help other departments protect the data because the data is throughout an organization. It's in HR, it's in sales and marketing, it's in IT, it's in finance. So you have to be able to work with all these teams across your organization and I think the best way to do that is to go in there and say this is the law this is what we need to accomplish and you have to find you know this is kind of corny and and it's over said but you have to find your privacy champions throughout the organization. I found them at No Name, people in sales and marketing, for example, that understand that we have to do this properly.

And so you just work as collaboratively as possible. And you tell them the risks, and then they're grownups, they understand. I think I'd like to be remembered as somebody who didn't get stuck. I didn't get stuck at one company or in one field. I was able to evolve with the changing times. So I feel like I was able to sort of roll with the times. And, you know, I hope to be looked at as a good lawyer. Whatever field you're in, you know, you have to put in the hard work. Thank you. And now, a message from Black Cloak. Did you know the easiest way for cybercriminals to bypass your company's defenses is by targeting your executives and their families at home?

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