CyberWire Daily - Kristin Strand: Be firm in your goals. [Consultant] [Career Notes]

Episode Date: March 13, 2022

Cybersecurity Associate Consultant at BARR Advisory, Kristin Strand, shares her journey from the military to teaching and now to cybersecurity. Kristin shares how she'd wanted to be a teacher since she was young. She joined the Army to help pay for college and throughout her career has taken advantage of programs to help her move on to her next challenge. From teaching, Kristin decided to transition to IT and came to cybersecurity through a Department of Labor program. She's also currently training to be a drill sergeant. Kristin advises you stand firm to your goals and know what you want. It will come around. We thank Kristin 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. Hello, my name is Kristen Strand. I am a cybersecurity associate consultant at Bar Advisory. As I was growing up, I always wanted to be a teacher. I can remember from about second grade, I was playing basketball in high school,

and one of the coaches was actually a recruiter, and he knew I wanted to go to college, but wasn't going to be able to pay for everything out of pocket. And so he sold me that line that the military would pay for my schooling. And so there I was signed up in the army. I definitely expected it to be hard and it was, but I kind of approached it like I approached many things that I found to be difficult. find someone that I know already did it. And I'm like, if they can do it, I can do it. And that got me through basic training and then through a lot of the things that I wanted to accomplish as far as the Army was concerned. I went to college. I originally thought I was going to teach phys ed.

And I just actually found the content to be pretty boring. So then I changed my major to teach math. So that's what I did for about six years. I enjoyed it. I like solving problems and knowing that I got to the right answer. Teaching is rewarding, but not very lucrative. And I have a family, so I wanted to make more money. Originally, I felt like being a teacher was a stable job, job security. The world will always need teachers. So in career changing, I also thought about, okay, what job can I get

that can also be just as rewarding, but also job security, like, you know, where is the world going? And so, of course, I thought computers, IT, and so that's how I decided to get into IT. I always considered myself to be pretty tech savvy, you know, by looking at YouTube or trial and error, able to figure out things, but just, you know, general things like I feel like I could learn to do anything. working with pilots that flew helicopters and checking their logs, their plans, and then checking in with them, making sure that they were on course, not experiencing any difficulties in flight, and checking them back in when they got back. Once I decided that I wanted to get into IT in the civilian side, to try and get some background, I changed my job specialty to IT. But it actually turns out that as a 25 Bravo, I was in a signal position and we worked mostly with antennas. So not really

what I wanted to do civilian side. So I'm actually training now to go and be a drill sergeant. So going to have a whole new job specialty. I'm going to be more in line with what I did in the civilian side, bringing in new soldiers and kind of teaching them the Army way. Trying to get the training that I needed to get into IT. So I went through the Department of Labor. They then connected me with Apprenti. I was able to attend this 12-week program that paid me while I went, so kind of like a job. And I went to class from nine to five, five days a week for 12 weeks, and they paid for my certifications and trained me, and here I am, cybersecurity. I have a plethora of engagements or projects, if you will, that I'm working on. And I kind of really self-manage throughout the day.

Maybe have meetings with internal coworkers or clients. And I have deadlines and due dates. I am so happy that I made these moves. It's honestly, it's better than what I thought that it could be. And that's just because of the company that I work for. I really believe that the culture there at Bar and, you know, they really care about the employee. And I see myself, you know, being here for a while and I love what I'm doing now. My go-to words of wisdom since I've started this whole process is just to make sure you know what you want, you know, have your goals set out and to stick to it, be firm in those goals and expressing them. I know when I first started out with the apprentice program, being in the military and wanting to progress in I.T. and looking at cybersecurity, a lot of people told me, you know, well, a good way to get into the I.T. industry is through help desk.

industry is through help desk. And I knew that that wasn't the type of job that I wanted, but I was willing, you know, to go that route if I had to, but I really was not wanting to do help desk to deal with angry people day in and day out who can't get their stuff to work. I got offered actually through Apprenti to do a help desk position first, but I knew like, that's not what I wanted to do. So I stood firm and I said, no, I'm not going to take it. I'm going to wait for cybersecurity to come along. They called me twice to offer me help desk and I declined it twice, standing firm on knowing what I wanted and cybersecurity came along. And it's really been the best decision that I made to stand firm and to know what I wanted and to wait for it to come around.

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