This author has yet to write their bio.Meanwhile lets just say that we are proud destrellatru contributed a whooping 47 entries.
My main take-away in this competition regarding the security of the financial sector is that we must continue to insist that financial institutions invest even more in their security and strengthen intelligence sharing (given that most financial institutions are linked through systems like Swift — the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) because the threat is growing and the techniques are becoming more and more sophisticated.
I started my career as an individual contributor and then, over time, developed into a manager and people leader. As much as I enjoyed the autonomy and flexibility of being an individual contributor, I was excited when I saw what I can achieve through others, and this motivated me to shift to a new gear in terms of my own work.
Surprisingly, I loved working remotely. I enjoyed being able to structure my own day rather than arriving at a designated time. I’m not exactly a morning person, and if I’d had to go to the office, I would have had to wake up early and then sit in traffic for 30 to 45 minutes just to be there on time.
My year has certainly been exciting! Of the 10 of us in the Sales Academy, four of us were at headquarters, and we were able to work together in the office, collaborating and asking questions, so I had a fantastic support system and was never the odd one out. Early on, we would also do Zoom calls with the teams in Plano, Texas, and New York, learning about cybersecurity and all our products and verticals.
I started learning right away, and it hasn’t stopped. The interns here are constantly getting new projects to work on, and you have to learn quickly — though I find I’ve really enjoyed that fast pace. I also had previous internship experience, so I was familiar with having challenges thrown at me and having to push through my uncertainty and address them.
When I applied to be an intern on the Palo Alto Networks Corporate Communications team, I never imagined I’d be reporting to work from my bedroom for the summer.
The UR team creates valuable, real-world professional experience for interns. While, of course, interns can expect several weeks of onboarding and ramping up their knowledge about their jobs, the philosophy at Palo Alto Networks is that one learns by doing. After all, an internship is supposed to prepare you for the next phase of your career, so it’s important to gain true professional experience.
It’s incredible how quickly the time has flown by since I joined the program, yet I also feel I’ve gotten the opportunity to do so much in just a short time. During my first year at Palo Alto Networks, I focussed on building a Telemetry platform that helps our customers maximize the benefits they enjoy from the products and services that Palo Alto Networks delivers.
Unlike many of my colleagues, who knew early in life that they wanted to pursue careers in cybersecurity or computer science, my background includes a variety of different, seemingly unrelated experiences. I grew up in Taiwan and was interested in international affairs and communications, so I attended college at National Chengchi University and earned my bachelor’s degree in diplomacy. After graduating, I gave myself two years to explore any career that interested me. I worked for a short time as a set designer with a filmmaking team, and then I worked as an editor for a company that published a design magazine and did public relations.
I was born and raised in Kyrgyzstan, a country that most people in the world haven’t heard of, and I speak both Russian and English. I lived in that country until I was about 24, after I earned my master’s degree in information systems. I never planned to get into sales at all. I set out to be a software developer, but I couldn’t code to save my life, so I went into systems administration, which basically meant I was in charge of everything that plugged into a socket and related to information technology.