CyberWire Daily - CyberWire Pro Interview Selects: Jaclyn Miller from NTT, Ltd.

Episode Date: December 31, 2021

During our winter break, our team thought you might like to try a sample of a CyberWire Pro podcast called Interview Selects. These podcasts are a series of extended interviews, exclusives, and a curated selection of our most engaging and informative interviews over the years, featuring cyber security professionals, journalists, authors and industry insiders. On this episode, the interview originally aired as a shortened version on the CyberWire Daily Podcast. In this extended interview, Dave Bittner speaks with Jaclyn Miller from NTT, Ltd. on diversity, inclusion and remote access security. Like what you hear? Consider subscribing to CyberWire Pro for $99/year. Learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jacqueline Miller is Chief Information Security Officer for Global Managed Services and Platforms Divisions for NTT Limited. Her day-to-day includes overseeing security and compliance programs, but in addition to that, she spends time mentoring young women, making sure they know there's a place for them in the industry. Here's my conversation with Jacqueline Miller. My focus is a lot on our strategy and roadmap, as well as our product development and offerings. So really the security of any of our offerings, including those that are kind of direct security services for our clients. For me, it's about looking at what are our customers dealing with, what is our industry dealing with, and what are our potential customers interested in or looking at leveraging managed

services to solve. So that's a lot of what I spend my day-to-day time on. It's collaborating with other parts of the organizations and with external partners as well to make sure that where NTT Limited Managed Services is heading makes sense for the industry, for our customers, and that we're staying ahead of really serious risks and serious threats when engaging with third-party providers like us. How do you describe your own leadership style? I use a very collaborative leadership style. For me, it's led by a lot of curiosity. So I'm not very much a fan of the top-down kind of decision-making triangle by any means. Empowering, especially in cybersecurity with the pace that our industry moves at, empowering, especially in cybersecurity with the pace

that our industry moves at, empowering everyone on our team to make decisions in the moment when something is happening is critical. So it's very important to make sure that we're breaking down our strategy to all of our team members and being relatable as well to our team members. That's also helpful in client conversations to make sure that they understand what risks can we help mitigate just by consuming our services? Where do we have extensibility to help them expand and grow, improve their security roadmaps? And each of those conversations has to be custom tailored for where that person or where that team is on any given day too, right? Not everyone is having a great day. So sometimes, you know, it's about tailoring my leadership style and the

conversations collaboration that I have with all of these different business partners of mine to make sure that we're having an equal conversation and we're on equal footing. That I'm not talking in too much industry jargon, but I'm also there as an advisor, a trusted advisor, and a leader in my field to provide them new information that they can adapt, adopt, and make decisions on. I want to touch on the diversity component here. As a woman at the very high level in your company. Were there any particular challenges that you faced on the way up? Yeah, I think any woman who has grown her career in technology and in cybersecurity has had to overcome some of very common challenges, which is, you know, on the

way up, there were very few, if no, mentors that looked and sounded like me, right? I've had fantastic mentors over the years and do today, but a lot of them are men, and just to be frank, white men, and they have incredible skill strengths and experience that I draw from when I have questions or I'm working through something that I need a mentor for. But the challenging part is it's lonely. That rise to the top is lonely and it doesn't have to be that way. So I think, you know, one of the most important things for me looking back over how I grew is helping others that are looking to make that journey into leadership in technology and cybersecurity, make sure that they have forums where they can find like-minded women who are going through the same process as themselves,

and also women that have been through it. And finding those resources can be challenging, although I will say it is getting considerably easier. And there's just more out there in the world right now, which is fantastic. Yeah, I know, for example, you're active with the Michigan Council of Women in Technology. Why is that an important organization for you to spend your time with? Yeah, so I think there are a number of national organizations that operate both online and with local chapters in cybersecurity and supporting women in technology. But it's really important to be connected to your local network. So Michigan Council for Women in Technology is important to me because I am from Michigan. I grew up here. I have family here. I have strong roots in the Midwest.

up here. I have family here. I have strong roots in the Midwest. And while I am connected to other national organizations, MCWT has a special place in my heart just because it is my local network. And Reach Out, unfortunately, during the pandemic has been almost entirely virtual. But now that things are opening back up and previously having those face-to-face conversations with women, both that have grown their career, women that are in the process of growing their career, just like me, and then also young girls that are exploring STEM and seeking out opportunities, providing new opportunities in all phases of kind of growth, education, and career is something that MCWT focuses on and specializes on. And that's another key reason why they're special to me as an organization is because of

that spectrum of growth. And one thing that they do a really good job with is that they're willing to pull women in at any point in that career cycle, which I very much align to and believe in terms of cybersecurity. So if a woman is, you know, she could be well into her 20s or 30s and thinking about making a career change, MCWT has programs that focus around that type of transition. At the same time, they've also been able to grow programs for girls in STEM at both the lower elementary high school and into the college years in terms of internships and mentorship program with girls that are working on their computer science degrees. When you're out and about mentoring younger women who are considering coming up into the industry, what's your message?

What sorts of inspiration do you share with them? So I pull from my background as much as possible, which is it's more important to get started than it is to know all the things that there is to know about cybersecurity. than it is to know all the things that there is to know about cybersecurity. Certainly, if young women have the opportunity to go through an associate's or a bachelor's program before they enter the workforce, that's fantastic. But only about 50% of women that are in the workforce, and even lower with men, actually have a degree before getting into cybersecurity. And I think that's really interesting. And it identifies the fact that there are multiple paths into the industry. So when I'm talking with women that are thinking about that, it is to recognize that there are multiple channels in and not to keep your blinders on and think that there's only one path forward or one way to succeed in terms of developing a career in cybersecurity. There's a lot of really great certification programs that can help women if

college is not something that is affordable or just from a timing perspective is not something that's achievable. And I think cybersecurity benefits from a really diverse background. So having people that come in from very different experiences is incredibly important to making sure that we have full line of sight of the types of threats and scenarios we need to be aware of going into the future. And how do you spread that message from the top down, you know, when getting that word out to the folks who are doing the hiring? Yeah. One thing I can't stress enough, whether it's cybersecurity or any other type of technical field is making sure that you have a diverse hiring panel. So one of the key indicators and studies or key success

factors and studies that have been done over the last 15 years is making sure that there's women and other diverse hiring managers or even just advisors on that hiring panel. It'll help identify resources that don't look so male and don't look so white. You know, we as humans have a natural tendency to be drawn to people that look and sound like us. That's a natural thing that a natural trend that happens. And by diversifying our hiring panel, we're opening ourselves up to having a different conversation and seeing candidates through different lights, which is really hard to do when you're just trying to do all of that, you know, have all of those world experiences yourself. I don't, I don't think that any one manager is that well-rounded. It takes a team to make those types of decisions, especially for leadership

or middle management, team lead, or senior architecture roles. I highly recommend having more of a panel-style interview. The other thing that I'd recommend is being open and transparent about your goals in terms of diversity and equity and inclusion, identifying the fact that, you know, you have an imbalance of the number of women on your team or the number of diverse candidates coming in your pool. And the more that you talk about that, the more it's going to solve the supposed, or what I hear often is that I'd love to hire diverse candidates, but there are none of them in the pipeline. And it's been really interesting that there's a new study that came out recently, just in last year, looking at the percentage of women in cybersecurity. And we've been hanging, as an industry, we've been hanging around 19, 20% for quite a few years. But the last year, the pandemic

has actually improved our metrics there so we're closer to 25 percent women's kind of the first time we've actually seen a material bump um in in a while which is fantastic so i think that's a good indicator to say you know that there are women in that pool and the way that we need to get in touch with those women or get in touch with diverse candidates is to bring up and use our platforms that we have as leaders to identify that we need diverse candidates, that we have those things opened up and having connect, you know, connections within our own network that are diverse, other women to share that we are hiring into those roles is going to help us expand that pipeline to a more diverse audience so that that announcement of those job opportunities aren't just going into the same

kind of white male pool that it has been and has been perpetuating the problem of not diversifying our teams over the last five or so years. Our thanks to Jacqueline Miller from NTT Limited for joining us.