CyberWire Daily - Kyla Guru: You are a key piece to our national security. [Education] [Career Notes]

Episode Date: September 22, 2024

Enjoy this special encore episode, where we are jjoined by Founder and CEO of nonprofit Bits N' Bytes Cybersecurity Education and undergraduate student at Stanford University, Kyla Guru shares her journey from GenCyber Camp to becoming a cybersecurity thought leader. Seeing the need. for cybersecurity education in her own community spurred Kyla into action engaging our civilian population in understanding their role in the cybersecurity space. Kyla recommends putting yourself out there: taking courses, getting more knowledge, getting internships, meeting people and going to conferences. Kyla thinks her generation has an inquisitive mind and feels that is where advocacy and education come in with cybersecurity. She shares for any young person "thinking about maybe starting something in security, this is definitely the time to do so." And, we thank Kyla 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. of you, I was concerned about my data being sold by data brokers. So I decided to try Delete.me. I have to say, Delete.me is a game changer. Within days of signing up, they started removing my personal information from hundreds of data brokers. I finally have peace of mind knowing my data privacy is protected. Delete.me's team does all the work for you with detailed reports so you know exactly what's been done. Take control of your data and keep your private life Thank you. 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. I'm Kyla Guru. I am the founder and CEO of Bits and Bytes Cybersecurity Education, and I'm also a biochemist.

So I was kind of always surrounded by math and science, always driven in the importance of those two things in the world. And I saw that growing up, especially with my dad and the conversations that he would have at the dinner table. A lot of what he used to do in his work was fraud examination in like auditing and in accountancy. So just from hearing him speak about those things at the dinner table, I was really intrigued as to see like what even is cybersecurity. I was interested in, you know, coding and like comp sci. And then the summer before I entered high school, I took that first step and I was like, OK, I'm going to sign myself up for a gen cyber camp at Purdue University. myself up for a GenCyber camp at Purdue University. I signed up for this camp and it was at GenCyber that something just switched inside of me. It was that kind of that like light that flicked inside of me and then also the combination of learning at that camp that almost 90% of cyber attacks are

due to human error alone. It was those two kind of facts that I think amalgamated into what became bits and bytes cybersecurity. Because when I came home, I saw in my own community that we were having these identity theft cases and social engineering attacks, but there wasn't really like proactive conversation happening to stop the next attack from happening and to engage our civilian population in understanding their role in the cybersecurity space and how do they protect themselves and why is that so important? So I kind of made it my mission to start those conversations. And for me, I thought starting it on the elementary school level would be the easiest kind of way since I was a student at the time. So I kind of thought that I would work inside of the system to make some changes.

I went to GenCyber for a second year for the advanced camp. I got more into Kali Linux and ethical hacking. I took SANS courses. And now in college, I'm taking several courses from professors in cyber and just getting more and more knowledge as I go through internships and meet people and go to conferences. And it's really about putting yourself out there. And the more that you kind of embrace the idea of learning, the more like the opportunities for learning will just gravitate towards you. Understanding future focused solutions requires an understanding of what is our current knowledge base and security and what

are our priorities. So I would say from the conversations that I have with students and kind of the groups that I've studied in a sense, like what I'm seeing is that our generation really does care about security. And even though a lot of people will say that, like, they just don't care about it. They just don't like mind it or mind having their privacy infringed I think our generation does have questions and we do have an inquisitive mind a curious mind we've always been the kind to google and want a really quick answer about something like we have these curiosities as well as this just want to know more. But we're not really getting those answers. And I think that's leading us to make assumptions.

And so that's where I think the education piece and the advocacy and communications piece from the security industry is definitely needed. And so I think it's just putting a layer of context on that, of like, why is this so critical? Why is it important? It's important because you are a key piece to our national security and your security is the key to your

neighbor's security and is the key to our nation's security. Like kind of putting it in bigger contexts like that. The entrepreneurship journey that has taken me in is like is so so fun and i would definitely say like for any young person listening or um that is kind of thinking about maybe starting something in security like this is definitely the time to do so and i couldn't recommend like being the driver of your own project and your own vision more. Bits and Bytes is definitely still growing and I'm really excited to see like, as I said, as the industry, as cybersecurity grows and expands, how we can push the needle forward in this education and advocacy space, as well as getting users connected to everything that's happening in the industry.

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