CyberWire Daily - Ingrid Toppelberg: Knowing how to take risks will pay off. [Cybersecurity education] [Career Notes]

Episode Date: July 25, 2021

Chief Product Officer at Cybint Solutions, Ingrid Toppelberg, shares her journey from consulting to bootcamp coach and cybersecurity education. As a young girl, Ingrid wanted to do everything from being a teacher to the head of the World Bank. After consulting for several years, Ingrid found cybersecurity. What she found fascinating about the cyber world is how important it is for absolutely everyone at all levels to know about cybersecurity. Ingrid also develops and conducts bootcamps to reskill displaced people into cybersecurity. Ingrid says to those interested in cyber, "just do it. We need different kinds of minds in cyber keeping us safe." We thank Ingrid 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 Ingrid Toppelberg. I'm Chief Product Officer at Siving Solutions and Head Coach at MIT Entrepreneurship Bootcamp. entrepreneurship bootcamps. I wanted to do everything when I was a little kid, basically.

I went from journalism to teacher to president of the World Bank. I really loved learning all my life, and I've been doing like totally random stuff forever. I remember when I had to choose what to study in college, I was talking to my dad and my dad was like, well, you just, you can study anything and then go work for McKinsey and then you're just going to learn a lot from your colleagues. So that's when I decided that eventually I wanted to do management consulting. I started at McKinsey, did several years of management consulting, changing topics and countries all the time and I learned to learn very fast and I learned to be very curious about absolutely everything. I studied at MIT. I did my MBA there.

And then I left and I started moving around the world. I was doing independent consulting, mostly focused on change management and helping organizations absorb new technologies. organization absorb new technologies and also working in an education and technology startup doing boot camps in different parts of the world. I for example I spent a lot of time in Saudi Arabia helping women get into the workforce and it was one of the most amazing experience I've had in my life. amazing experience I've had in my life. In parallel to that, I was, and I still am, working for MIT boot camps. We have like an entrepreneurship and innovation boot camp that we've been delivering around the world

and these days online. I really didn't know what I wanted to do next. I knew I wanted to work in high tech and I knew I wanted something meaningful. I was in a MIT alumni event and I met one of my current colleagues who introduced me to SEO and it was fascinating. So now I'm working in this cyber education global company and I'm loving it. What I found fascinating about the cyber world is how important for absolutely everyone is to know about cybersecurity. I'm developing different kinds of training for different people in order for them to

really understand how this affects them and what is it that they can do in order to keep themselves and their organization safe. And at the same time we're also developing this cybersecurity bootcamp that's to reskill people into cybersecurity. And the next few years, there will be 4 million vacant cybersecurity positions in the world. So having the opportunity to give people this chance to reskill into cybersecurity and have like a future-proof career, something super motivated. Just do it. Find the right training for you and do it.

There's a huge opportunity. There's a lot of jobs available in cyber. And because in cyber, we're all the time trying to anticipate what the criminals want to do. We need different kinds of minds in cyber keeping us safe. And I think that getting more women into cyber and more diversity in general, but particularly in this case, women, is super, super important to make the whole security effort more effective. I coach a lot of young professionals and they all think that their first job is the one that's going to define them forever. And it's just your first job. I tried this and it didn't work out. It actually just enriches your profile.

It's not that it takes away from it so really really experiment takes risk as much as you can the world is changing so fast that this skill like knowing different things and knowing how to take risks it actually will pay off I really want to know that I that I I made a difference in people's lives like even I I always say that in training when you're training people there's this moment where suddenly they got it and their eyes sparkle and that that's priceless as someone that's that's training that that moment that aha moment that happens and suddenly their lives are different, it's really priceless.

I really hope to be remembered for those small things, but also for the impact in the people I work with. So I really want to be a good colleague for everybody around me. Hey everybody, Dave here. Have you ever wondered where your personal information is lurking online?

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