CyberWire Daily - Encore: Elizabeth Wharton: Strong shoulders for someone else to stand on. [Legal] [Career Notes]

Episode Date: May 5, 2024

Technology attorney and startup chief of staff Elizabeth Wharton shares her experiences and how she came to work with companies in technology. Elizabeth talks about how she always liked solving problems and Nancy Drew mysteries, but not litigation. These morphed finding into her home in the policy legal world and some time later, technology law. Elizabeth describes how she loves planning and strategy in her work and encourages others to ask questions and absorb all of the information. Our thanks to Elizabeth 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. This is Elizabeth Wharton, and I am an attorney by training and currently chief of staff at Scythe, an internet startup company. I've always enjoyed solving problems. Nancy Drew being some of my favorite books growing up. Early on, I thought I was going to be kind of the white knight, say, district attorney fighting crime. And I realized very quickly after years of high school mock trial competitions that at the end of the day, I did not enjoy litigation. So while I knew I had found my home in the policy legal world, it took me a little while to come upon the technology side. So I spent a few years on the Hill, looked around the room and said, what's next?

And saw that everyone who was at that level I thought I wanted to be, they all had a law degree. From there, I went to law school, passed the bar, and of course, answered the siren's call of big law firm, big money, big projects, and worked in finance, business, and real estate for about the first six years. As I started doing that, more and more friends being in the Atlanta area were involved in different technology projects, research, and they start asking you questions and, you know, hey, if we're doing this, if we're researching this, is this legal? And from there, it just snowballed. And next thing I know is the John Wick and the John Wick movies would say,

are you back, John? And eventually he's like, yeah, I guess I am. So it's, you know, are you a technology attorney? Well, yeah, I guess I am. From there, I've had the good fortune to take that years of advising businesses from the outside looking in and helping companies shape their strategy from the legal perspective, that I've been able to grow that and now can help companies shape their strategy from the inside looking out. So that's been a lot of fun. looking out. So that's been a lot of fun. It really helps building in if you have thought five moves ahead as you're doing something that when surprises come up later, it's a lot of fun

when I get to be able to say, oh no, no, we built that, we baked that into the contract ahead of time. Or yeah, I anticipated, I mean, one of the best examples is you look at, for example, if I'm working with security researchers and we've got a product that we want to use that says, oh, you can't reverse engineer this software. But if I know going in that, well, that's exactly what we're gonna do, but not from a malicious standpoint. Instead, we wanna make sure it meets our needs. So knowing how to then go back to the other company

and say, hey, gonna be honest, engineering team's gonna reverse this, but we're doing it to protect ourselves. So basically think of it as we're going to be doing free quality assurance testing. And suddenly folks love you because they're like, wait, you're going to pay us money to use our product and give us effective feedback on how to make it better. Yeah, let's do that. on how to make it better. Yeah, let's do that. Ask those questions. Find what brings you joy, what piques your interest, what sparks your imagination. Look around, see who's doing even just a piece of that or a part of that and ask them, hey, what about this drove you there?

What should I do? What can I learn? And just absorb that information. Every step of the way, I have had someone willing to give their time, their expertise, and really just mentoring doesn't quite sum it all up. I mean, supporting, cheering me on.

And I'd like to think that I can just help someone else because the adage that a rising tide lifts all ships, we didn't get to where we are without the help of others. And so I just like to add strong shoulders for someone else to stand on and help reach their heights. Hey everybody, Dave here. Have you ever wondered where your personal information is lurking online? Like many of you, I was concerned about my data being sold by data brokers.

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