CyberWire Daily - Jamil Jaffer: You should run towards risk. [Strategy] [Career Notes]

Episode Date: November 7, 2021

Senior Vice President for Strategy, Partnerships, and Corporate Development at IronNet Cybersecurity, Jamil Jaffer, shares how his interest in technology brought him full circle. Always a tech guy, Jamil paid he way through college doing computer support. Jamil went to law school and worked in various jobs in Washington DC including a stint in the newly-created National Security division of the Justice Department just after 9/11. When talking about adversity, Jamil notes, "Adversity has happened in life, but you gotta run at those things. To me, you know, I like risk. I think risk is something that a lot of people shy away from." We thank Jamil for sharing his 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. Jamil Jaffer. I'm Senior Vice President at IronNet Cybersecurity for Strategy, Partnerships, and Corporate Development, if you want the full detailed title. development, if you want the full detailed title. I come from a family where my dad came to the U.S. with a few hundred dollars in his pocket. He didn't have a job. He had a bachelor's degree,

yes, but from the University of East Africa, Dar es Salaam, right? We're ethically Indian, but three generations of my family grew up in East Africa. My dad got a job working first at the University of Toronto. Then he moved to LA and got a job at UCLA. He was one of these people who just walked in and said, look, you want to hire me. I'm going to work my butt off for you, and I'm going to do good things. And both my mom and dad gave me that work ethic. I was, I'm a child of the 80s. And so in 1984, I got my first computer.

It was a Tandy TRS-80 color computer, the so-called Trash 80. 4K of onboard RAM, 4 kilobytes. We upgraded the 16 kilobytes, me and my dad. And we were the talk of the Rainbow Computer Club in Santa Monica, right? What are you going to do with 16K of onboard RAM? Oh my God, it's so much memory, right?

But I paid my way through college doing computer support. So I did computer support at UCLA for the life science department, for the athletics department. I crawled through ceilings running 10 base T cable and doing fiber punchdown blocks. So I've always had sort of technology in my heart even though i did government i did politics i did law for a while so this has

always been a part of you know what i've been into i went to ucla for college probably sci econ but did all that computer support stuff. I had a chance to go work on some campaigns and on Capitol Hill for a great congressman from Virginia, Bob Goodlatte. People might remember him because he was the one that freed up the sale of strong encryption that really has allowed us, frankly, to use the kind of strong encryption we need on our web browsers and the like to really protect our financial transactions. Then I went off to law school at the University of Chicago. I worked for a federal judge. I worked at a law firm. I worked at the government, at the Justice Department.

And then I had this amazing opportunity to go work at the newest division at the Justice Department, the National Security Division. This is a division created after 9-11 to bring together the counterterrorism, counterespionage people, and the people that did foreign intelligence surveillance. And at this time, the real new way of doing foreign intelligence surveillance, as now we've all started talking about post-Snowden, right, was in the cyber domain. So I was able to take my knowledge and skills in the cyber domain

and apply them in a very real practical way to helping identify terrorists, identify spies and the like, working with our lawyers and our operators, the FBI and the NSA, to really engage in some really cool operations, some of which have now been declassified. And then I had a chance to go work at the White House Counsel's Office and the Bush administration. There I had a chance to work on President Bush's comprehensive national cybersecurity initiative, then went back to being a regular workaday lawyer, sort of got tired of that pretty quick and ended up going to the House Intelligence Committee, where I worked on the cyber information sharing legislation for Mike Rogers, and then the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and now IronNet.

Now, by the way, that sounds like a lot of jobs. It has been a lot of jobs. IronNet, cybersecurity, has been the longest job I've ever had. At almost seven years, it is three times more than the longest job I ever had before this. So I've loved it here. We're having a great time with General Alexander and the whole team. Bill Welch, our new co-CEO. It's been an awesome time

and really pumped about what we're doing as we start thinking about what's next to the next iteration for IronNet. Adversity has happened in life, gotta you gotta run at those things to me you know i like risk i think risk is something that a lot of people shy away from a lot of lawyers are very risk averse and that's why i describe myself as a recovering lawyer because i think risk aversion is a mistake for people who are are driven and smart and excited about what they're doing frankly if you're passionate about something you love love it, you should run towards risk.

Risk is your friend. You're going to be successful at it. And if you're not successful at it and you struggle, you're going to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get better. And so I look at a lot of my friends and colleagues and say, hey, you've got amazing opportunities. Are you having a challenge? Great. Run at it. If you fail, get up, dust yourself off, and run at it again.

run at it if you fail get up duck yourself off and run at it again cyber security could not be a more exciting environment to get into it is a rare industry that had a zero percent unemployment rate for the last decade i don't think there's any other industry in the space where there's that kind of low unemployment rate because there's an over demand for people and under supply and And so if you're thinking about getting into cybersecurity and you want to change your career or you want to go get a degree or you're a young person thinking about what should I do in college, if you're excited about this, I think really, you really got to be passionate about it. You got to be into it. If you're into it and you want to do it, make the leap, do it. There's a ton of jobs. There's a ton of opportunity.

I'm a career switcher, right? I'm a lawyer. I was in the government. Yeah, I had cyber elements in my background, the technology stuff I did growing up and the technology stuff I did as a lawyer. I made a hard switch. When I came to Ironit, part of my deal was I'm not going to do any legal work for the company. And I said, look, I want to be a leader in the business space. I've been a lawyer. I've been there, done that. It's all about bringing together people to reach a common mission. That's what IronNet's about as a company, this idea of collective defense. That's what I'm about as a person, right? If you can bring people together

and solve a common problem, I think that's what it's all about. And that should be the goal and run hard at things and just have fun. I want people to think that here was a guy who ran hard at problems, didn't shy away from tough problems, worked hard on them, brought people together to find a solution, and got things done.

If people could say that about me, I'll be happy at the end of the day. 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.