CyberWire Daily - Maria Varmazis: Combining cyber and space. [Space] [Career Notes]

Episode Date: April 23, 2023

Maria Varmazis, N2K's Space Correspondent and host of N2K's newest podcast T-Minus, sits down to share her journey on combining her two passions of space and cyber. Maria grew up wanting to be an astronomer, in school she focused on joining anything with technology and enjoyed the classes that made her think. After transferring to a new college, she went into journalism, absolutely falling in love with the new career path she had made for herself. She got herself a job at Sophos and that's where she learned about cybersecurity. Now she discusses cyber and space in her new podcast, combining her two passions into one for all to understand. Maria discusses some of the setbacks she overcame in this industry and shares the wise advice of "I would never pretend that failure isn't painful, but it is an incredible teaching tool. So if you feel like you've had a huge career fail or a really big misstep, you can still pivot from that and you can make that into something." We thank Maria 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. I grew up in the age of Hubble, so for me, I wanted to be an astronomer. I was really interested in tinkering with things. My father was an engineer. My mother is extremely practical. She's an artist and a writer, so I loved building things and making stuff.

One of the first skills I learned as a little kid was how to solder. And we always had computer parts and things around the house, and I would build my own machines, build my own computers. And I was just very interested in science and engineering as a kid, but like astronomy especially was my strong, strong love. So I kept joining computer clubs. I was the person who would help like the IT department after school. I was the person who did the school websites back when the internet was new and nobody knew how to do websites. Anything I could get my hands on that was sort of techie and nerdy is the area where I would be focused.

When I was in high school, I decided I wanted to be a computer scientist, given that I loved computers. And I wasn't as good at physics as I think I needed to be to become an astronomer. So I figured computer science might be a nice home for me. So I applied to a bunch of computer science engineering schools and eventually got into one, thankfully. That whole thing about me not being as great at math and science as I needed to be became extremely painful when I was in my engineering school years. So I enjoyed the classes that required me to think about systems, things about logic or how systems worked. But I hated the classes I was taking regarding the career I wanted. So something was very, very wrong.

So two years of engineering school completed. I realized I needed a major course change, and I had no idea what to do. So I dropped out of college. I realized I needed a major course change, and I had no idea what to do. So I dropped out of college. And I took about nine months with no college at all. I took a data entry job because, again, I was a nerd, and it was a job I was good at. I could type fast, and I understood how computers worked. And I did a data entry job at a B2B publishing house called Penwell. And I started understanding from that sort of how the publishing industry worked from the inside. I transferred to UMass Amherst, my local state

school, and I did the journalism program there in their honors college. And I had a blast. I loved it. It could not have been more different from my first two years in school where I was basically constantly miserable. And I graduated summa cum laude from UMass Amherst in my journalism program and got a minor in Japanese because I just wanted to for fun. So I'm very glad I changed course as painful as it was at the time. I wasn't sure what to do with myself next. It was sort of felt like a repeat of what I went through in college where, oh great, I have to reinvent what I'm going to do with myself yet again. While applying to many, many jobs, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life, I saw that cybersecurity companies in the Boston area were looking for what they were calling corporate

storytellers, which nowadays I think we would call content marketing. I ended up getting hired at Sophos to do that. And that's where I started learning about cybersecurity, on-the-job training, working with a lot of people there who understood how cybersecurity worked and were doing it every day. And a lot of times people would be surprised when they found out I had some sort of geek knowledge, computer science knowledge. It helped me quite a bit in understanding what people were talking about. I've always loved space, as we've talked about. And I happened to apply for a program at NASA last year, and they accepted me. I got to be at NASA Goddard. And that was just a great reminder that I really love space. This is something that I've been a nerd about my whole life, even if it's been on background sometimes. As a Trekkie,

it's always kind of not been that far in the background. I guess some folks who had been hearing me on some of the podcasts that I've been on, the Cybersecurity Podcast, like Smashing Security, didn't know that I was interested in space. And so it's sort of an opportunity arose. It's totally kismet. I just love that that's how it happened, that I just tweeted about me going to NASA and folks at the Cyber Wire saw. I feel like I just got incredibly lucky on that front. And I'm very, very grateful. I never thought I'd get to bring my passion for space to the forefront and make that an evolution in my career. But here I am. And here's T-Minus. in tech, but for real, don't be afraid of failure. It can hurt a lot. I can attest it hurts a lot to go through failure. I'm not going to pretend it doesn't. And it is very humbling every time it happens. But no education is ever wasted. I have learned so much every single time I have failed.

And everything I have ever done has helped me make a step to something else that's new. I would never pretend that failure isn't painful, but it is an incredible teaching tool. So if you feel like you've had a huge career fail or a really big misstep, you can still pivot from that and you can make that into something. And I have found that when you are honest with people

about failures or mistakes that you have made, most people are really understanding and I think you just do what you have made, most people are really understanding. And I think you just do what you have to do. You have to survive. You have to move forward. And you just, if you have a failure, you have to take the next steps. So that's my big one. And the second thing is that since I've worked so long in communications and sort of the STEM world, a lot of people who work in telling stories or communication, they seem to sort of down STEM world, a lot of people who work in telling stories or communication, they seem to sort of downplay what they bring to the table and that they don't think that what they offer is really all that valuable compared to technical skills. And I just want to

tell those folks who might be thinking about like communications and cybersecurity or marketing or corp comms in any kind of way, what you do is very valuable and don't downplay that. If you're a person who is telling those stories, you are working in cybersecurity. You can say that. It's okay. You have permission. And you know a lot more than you think you do. So don't feel like you don't contribute

because you are very valuable. I hope I made their lives and careers a little easier. I hope I was useful and that I provided some utility. But most importantly, I hope they'll just remember that they'll remember my laugh. They'll remember how I made them feel. Hopefully I made them feel good and a little more confident in what they're trying to do. That's kind of what I'm all about. And now, a message from Black Cloak. Did you know the easiest way for cybercriminals to bypass your company's defenses

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