CyberWire Daily - Encore: Dinah Davis: Building your network. [R&D] [Career Notes]

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

In honor of International Women's Day, please enjoy this encore of Dinah Davis sharing her story. Coming from her love of math, VP of R&D at Arctic Wolf Networks Dinah Davis shares how she arrived in the cybersecurity industry after finding her niche. Dinah recalls how at a time of indecision, a computer course at university and a job with the Canadian government helped to solidify her career direction. Dinah mentions how "security and cryptography specifically was this perfect mix of real world problem solving and mathematics and computer science all combined into one ball of happiness." Networking played a key role in Dinah's journey. She recommends that those interested in joining the field to go for what they believe in. And, we thank Dinah for sharing her story with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Now at a special discount for our listeners. private by signing up for Delete Me. Now at a special discount for our listeners, today get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go to joindeleteme.com slash n2k and use promo code n2k at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindeleteme.com slash n2k and enter code n2k at checkout. That's joindeleteme.com slash n2k code n2k. My name is Dinah Davis, and I am the VP of R&D at Arctic Wolf Networks. R&D at Arctic Wolf Networks. I really, in high school, I just really liked math a lot. I really enjoyed it. I took all the advanced level courses and I didn't really know what to do with that. So I went to the career counselor at my school and I said, you know, I'm really good at math. I really like it. I don't know what to do. And he said, well, you should be a math teacher.

And 17-year-old self was pretty naive and thought, okay, I guess that's what I should do. So I went off to university to become a math teacher. So I went off to university to become a math teacher. And at that point, I was like, well, now I really don't know what I'm going to do. I'm just getting a math degree here. But as it happened, in my third year of university, I took my first computing course. And within two or three classes of that first class, I was like, this is amazing. I'm like, I love this. And so I ended up working for the Canadian government and that was my introduction to

cryptography. And as it happens, the job was to implement the Bluetooth protocol in C++ for the research team so they could evaluate it as part of AES to see if it was secure or not. So for me, I just found that security and cryptography specifically was this perfect mix of real world problem solving and mathematics and computer science all combined into one ball of happiness. And so that really kicked off my trajectory into a more security focused career. I went back to university to finish my last year. And so I did my master's in cryptography. But then I was, you know, looking for a job in 2001 or 2002. That wasn't a good time to look for a job in tech.

It was right after the bubble had burst. And I was having such a hard time finding a job. But I had gone to a little security conference in the summertime, and I had met some people from BlackBerry. And that was exciting because BlackBerry was not even quite a big thing yet at that time. So for the next eight years, I worked on the bleeding edge of mobile security at BlackBerry on the security team. And it was amazing. It was an amazing ride. I am so glad I got to do that. I had gone to a, it's called Think About Math. And it's this program that the University of Waterloo runs for girls in grade nine. they bring them in and they and they have them meet all these women who have graduated with math degrees and and we talk to them about you know what we actually do as a job to to show them

what kind of careers they could have and while I was there um I I met a lady named Kim Trombley and her title was VP of R&D. And right before the event kind of started, I ran up to her and I said, Kim, I want to talk to you after this. Don't leave, OK? Because I want to do what you do someday. So I would really like to talk to you about how you got there. And as it turned out, like maybe two or three weeks later,

we had a lunch and she convinced me to come work for her, where I then got to run the whole R&D team for her. And I am now the VP of R&D at Arctic Wolf. So it was amazing, right? Had I not had that meeting, you know, who knows where I would be probably still doing something interesting. But it's all about, you know, getting out there and not being shy to talk to people, right? And building your network. It's also why I do everything I can to connect people as much as I can, because I know how valuable it was for me in my career that I just, you know, giving people the intro, you don't have to do a lot for them. You just have to give them the intro to the next spot,

and then they can do what they can do, right? You don't need to know how to code to get into security. Sure, it'll help you. It's going to give you, again, like you're saying, a different perspective as you come in. But there's so many things and so My favorite thing to tell people is to just start listening to the podcasts because it's the easiest thing to do. And it starts to immerse yourself in that world. And you'll start to see, you know, which stories that come out on these podcasts you get more most interested in, right? Which might point you to the direction of where in cybersecurity you want to go. So I think there's a lot of entry-level positions that people can come into, and we have such a deficit in, you know, having enough talent to fill all these roles. I think it's an amazing opportunity. Imposter syndrome is just that, a syndrome. And, you know,

I would often feel like I wasn't quite good enough because I had two math degrees and not a computer science degree, right? That I didn't know computer science as well as everyone else that I was working with. But I just brought that different perspective. I knew how to code, but I also had all this great, rich experience in cybersecurity that many of my coworkers didn't have at the time. So I think it's really just believing in yourself and going for it, right? Go for what you believe in. Your business needs AI solutions that are not only ambitious, but also practical and adaptable.

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