CyberWire Daily - Baan Alsinawi: Trust ourselves and be courageous. [Compliance] [Career Notes]

Episode Date: May 30, 2021

Managing Director at Cerberus Sentinel, Chief Compliance Officer and the President of TalaTek, Baan Alsinawi shares her cybersecurity journey from a teenager who wanted to understand computers and held several positions in IT from help desk to systems engineering and cybersecurity. Founding her own business focusing on compliance, Baan says she spends maybe only 20% of her day on technical tasks and that there is always so more to do. Finding the right people for her team is a marker of success for Baan. She talks of the importance of sharing the sense of community of women in technology and nurturing women in the field. We thank Baan for sharing her story with us. 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. My name is Vana Sinoui, and I am the Managing Director at Server Sentinel, Chief Compliance Officer, and the President of Talatec LLC. I was a young 17-year-old who was looking at computers and thinking, those are so cool, and I really wanted to understand how they work, and I wanted to be a computer person, whatever that meant at the time,

from my inexperienced mind. But I just felt that this is something new, and nobody else knew what it is. And I wanted to be the one who did. I went to an engineering school, control and systems engineering. And really since then, I have had any career you can think of in, and I would call it quote unquote, IT from help desk and managing desktops and motherboards and VGA cards, all the way to systems engineering, network engineering, managing a variety of aspects of cybersecurity for companies and businesses. While I started from a technical education and training

as a founder of a business and running a business, the technical side is maybe 20% of what my day-to-day looks like. A lot of it is more of managing the business, managing clients, managing teams, managing my time. A lot of growth in all these areas with the foundation of really understanding what the solution needs to be and helping others get there.

So it's a fun day, very busy day. And there's always so much more to do. I think if I am successful, it's because I've really made the right decisions about the team and the folks that I work with. I've been both fortunate and I give myself credit for picking the right people. And I'm not always successful in doing that, obviously, but it's really what I aspire to do and make sure people are allowed the opportunity to grow and do things that they find challenging. And I've had folks who've worked with me for almost a decade now, and it's just, we've continued to grow and do new things.

So that's sort of something I'm very proud of. Even when I started the business, like I talked about, my background is mostly technology. I would characterize myself as a geek. I veered into more of a regulatory compliance focus for my business only because I realized that is a business opportunity and there's a lot that we could do in that space from just pure supply and demand, if you will. But at the same time, wanted to do it differently than others. Honestly, back in 2006, offering a managed service wasn't that popular. It wasn't a cloud and businesses mostly wanted to have their own software on their own server in their own environment.

In 2008, we offered a managed service hosted elsewhere and we were able to get a small contract and built on that. And since then, we've been innovating. And, you know, obviously, the cloud and SaaS solutions are very prevalent right now, right? Most people are moving to the cloud. So it's just the fun of doing something new and, you know, getting it wrong a lot and getting it right sometimes. It is very important to me as a woman in tech, everything, even, you know, when I talk about when I was a young kid trying to learn computers, it wasn't really necessarily the popular thing for other girls to do.

And throughout my career, I cannot say that this is a female-centric career path, right? It's definitely male-dominated. I am currently part of a larger organization. I believe, you know, I am one of the few management roles who are females. And I have two young girls who I like to set, you know, help them find their path through their career path. And helping other women realize that there are opportunities, encouraging them, providing a community of like-minded women who can either provide role model or mentorship. Even just to know that, you know, there's somebody to ask if you need help. I think to me, that was tremendously helpful to know that I could reach out to other women. And, you know, even if I just have lunch with them and just kind of brainstorm about what am I doing and what have they done, what worked for

them, what didn't work, that sense of community amongst women is something that I am keen about and I really would like to continue to do and nurture other women in this field. I think I've held myself back so many opportunities and so many, I would, you know, no regrets. All that led to where I am today, but I certainly could have done more had I not been so unsure of myself and thinking, you know, there's no way I could do this. I definitely need somebody else to help me and hold my hand. And even with my business, I spent several years, I would say almost six, seven years looking for a partner thinking I can't do it on my

own. And it just, it took years for me to realize, wait a second, I've been doing it myself for the last eight years. Maybe I could do it myself. I really wasn't sure. It's just this realization that it took me years to realize. And I, if anything, I want to tell my younger self and other young woman you know just we really need that confidence that ability to trust ourselves and and be courageous honestly 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? Black Cloak's award-winning digital executive protection platform secures their personal devices, home networks, and connected lives. Because when executives are compromised at home, your company is at risk.

In fact, over one-third of new members discover they've already been breached. Protect your executives and their families 24-7, 365, with Black Cloak. Learn more at blackcloak.io.