WiCyS Career Fair Aims to Draw More Women to Cybersecurity
A lot has been said about the global shortage of cybersecurity workers. Today, around the world, there are roughly 4 million cybersecurity jobs sitting unfilled. Compounding this shortage is the wide gender gap across cybersecurity roles. Though great progress has been made in the last several years to bring more women to the cybersecurity table, women still only comprise one-quarter of the industry’s workforce. To address this shortage, it’s essential that we fill the gender gap.
Much has been written about the important role diversity plays in a productive workforce that is sensitive to the many varied needs of the industry. Women bring critical perspectives and experiences that are good for any business, including ours: Threat actors and their victims come from a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives, so our workforce must be just as diverse so that we’re equipped to handle that.
This is why Women in Cybersecurity, or WiCyS, was founded six years ago — to address this gender gap by facilitating connections between cybersecurity companies and potential job candidates, as well as to support professional development and advancement for women in the industry. As a member of the WiCyS Board of Directors and information security professional with Palo Alto Networks, the organization’s founding sponsor, I was privileged to help organize and participate, along with our University Recruiting team, in one of WiCyS’ many important annual activities: the Fall Virtual Career Fair, which took place Sept. 9, 2020.
Though our in-person conference is held each spring and has proven a nice venue for networking and professional development, there was a need for an event that could connect companies with intern candidates during the fall when college students are seeking internship opportunities. In response, WiCyS established its Fall Virtual Career Fair in 2019.
The event gives companies like ours the opportunity to meet with women of all ages and backgrounds to share insights into our work and our needs. We can answer questions about our day-to-day responsibilities, give practical advice about career growth, and meet potential candidates for open positions at our company. Meanwhile, candidates can ask questions about expectations and form professional relationships.
A New Way to Network
Prior to this virtual event, recruiters will have met with interested candidates and reviewed their qualifications in previously submitted resumes or through information given to WiCyS. This allows us to more effectively refer candidates to hiring managers and achieve a more specific, in-depth level of conversation. Though other such fairs exist for women in tech, this is the only event specifically designed for cybersecurity, making it extremely valuable.
Utilizing the vFairs virtual events platform, each sponsor company is assigned a “booth,” which is basically a chatroom, that enables interested candidates to approach them, explore job and internship opportunities, and meet with recruiters and company representatives to ask questions and express their interest in positions. Conversations are chat-based, though participants have the option to request a call from a representative to talk further or direct message particular members of employers’ teams. Employers have access to candidates’ profiles and resumes, so they can be very targeted in their advice, recruitment approach, or referrals. Similar to an application like Slack, the vFairs platform allows for conversations in real-time with multiple people, providing for excellent reach.
In the end, we discovered that although some were students, the majority of participants were actually professionals who were either looking to transition into cybersecurity as a new career path or had perhaps taken a break from their careers and were looking to return to the workforce. Many of them had considerable professional experience who were driven and talented but just needed a little guidance. Several expressed strong interest in cybersecurity and were looking for advice on training or experiences that could help. In the end, we formed connections with a number of strong candidates and, we hope, increased candidates’ interest in this field.
There’s still much speculation about why the cybersecurity workforce shortage exists or how best to grow the pipeline of talented workers of all genders, cultures, and backgrounds. Many factors are at play, including the availability of workplace-relevant training programs, lack of awareness, and more. But events such as the WiCyS Fall Virtual Career Fair can help by bringing employers and future employees together in a targeted, effective way. To learn more, visit WiCyS.org.
Breaking the Mold
As a Principal Researcher for Palo Alto Networks’ threat intelligence division, Unit 42, I’m focused on hunting cybercriminal threats and providing timely analysis and actionable intelligence to our customers and global security community. I’m based in Amsterdam, and my team and I work in close collaboration with the international security and law enforcement community to stop threat actors, and we educate customers about potential threats and help them prioritize their resources to protect themselves.
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.
In 2008, I decided to return to school and earn a master’s degree at American University in international communication, and I was interested in the numerous opportunities available in the U.S. This was just as the global economic crisis was beginning.
During my master’s program, I actually had aspirations of becoming a film professor — film is still a huge passion of mine. However, after I completed my master’s program, the recession made it very difficult to obtain a job. The first job I could get was as a translator for a cybersecurity company. After learning the basics of the field, I realized there was a real need for cybersecurity research, and that was something I was very interested in, so I convinced my employer to train me in security research. In that role, I focused on Chinese financially motivated cybercrimes.
That experience helped me understand how to detect and diagnose threats, but I wanted to learn more about how to address that on the client side, so I took a position with Uber, managing a global fraud intelligence program that identified cyber tools and tactics used against us in the ride-sharing industry.
After doing that for a couple of years, I realized that I missed doing research, and I wanted to work with a visionary leader in the space. I was familiar with Unit 42 and Palo Alto Networks, having worked in cybersecurity, so when I got the opportunity to work here, I jumped at it.
Although it doesn’t at first seem that my education and background would fit well with my current role, I do believe that it all contributes to my work in some way. In my diplomacy and international relations studies, I learned about the relationships among nuclear powers and nation states, non-governmental organizations, public diplomacy, global economies, and technology-empowered individuals who make a drastic impact on international politics. Knowing what’s happening in international societies and their economic policies is extremely useful in providing context for and explaining certain cybercrime campaigns, such as why those crimes were executed in the ways they were and why specific victims were targeted.
Additionally, my intercultural communications training included a master’s thesis in which I reviewed a virtual group to examine how they communicated with each other. This has been helpful in analyzing the behaviors, patterns, and business models of threat actors, which enable security defenders to develop strategies based on threat actors’ weaknesses and limits.
In my experience studying intercultural communications, I’ve encountered three analogies for how people interact in their world. The first is the idea of the melting pot, in which everyone fuses together to become one. The second is the salad bowl, in which very different people and backgrounds mix together but remain intact. The third is the cookie cutter, in which individuals force themselves into an existing mold — sometimes cutting parts of yourself away to fit.
Many people think of technology as being a cookie-cutter setting — they believe there’s a mold you have to fit with a specific set of experiences, behaviors, and skills. But what I’ve found here at Palo Alto Networks is that people in tech appreciate the unique qualities each person brings to a role. They hire you with the expectation that you will enrich the role with your own personality, ideas, and perspectives, and diverse experiences are welcome. So if working in technology interests you, my advice is it to just be yourself!
From Cyber Defense to COVID-19 Defense
One of Palo Alto Networks’ own is on the frontlines of the United States’ fight against coronavirus. Senior Director of IT Business Operations Steve Januario has been serving the nation’s military since 1997 and currently is Inspector General for the 195th Wing of the California Air National Guard, overseeing inspections for Cyber Defense, Intelligence, Space and Combat Communications. In a typical, non-pandemic year, this involves about one weekend a month of service, but there’s nothing typical about this year. When California Governor Gavin Newsom activated the Guard on March 23rd to assist in the state’s COVID-19 response, Steve said goodbye to his family (not to mention the new desk he’d purchased for working from home) and headed for the Sacramento area to bring his leadership skills to a new kind of battle.
While living in a hotel since March 24th, Steve has been performing his Palo Alto Networks duties in the morning and heading to an Army facility to work the long, daily swing shift as Battle Captain for the Guard, working with a team on an operations floor to oversee troop movement through California as part of the Guard’s four-fold COVID-19 response effort: working at area food bank facilities, providing logistical support for medical supply distribution, managing nursing stations, and operating homeless shelters.
“The Guard is doing a lot of great things,” Steve says. “We’ve packaged over 50 million meals at these food banks over the last several months, and we’ve been able to help communities in need throughout California.”
He credits the whole Palo Alto Networks IT Services team for its support while his time has been limited, especially as the unprecedented demands of getting the entire company transitioned to remote work were at their peak. He’s optimistic that California’s aggressive efforts to flatten the coronavirus curve will pay off. “People should feel assured that we have all the necessary equipment and food, and they should continue to stay home or follow safe social distancing and wear masks when going out,” he says. “This is something we’re taking very seriously… hopefully, we’ll start to see this taper off soon.”
Trailblazing
Rohan Kar, Product Management Academy
My Journey to Product Management
As a 90s kid in India, I vividly remember life pre-Internet, when Amazon was just a river, Google search didn’t exist, and you needed an actual paper map to travel. Contrasting that with the vast improvements in my life that came after, started a lifelong passion for technology as a catalyst for positive change in the world.
So when it came to deciding a career path, I wanted to get as much exposure as I could into building great technology products. When you simplify it, three things determine a successful product: what you build, how you build it, and how it’s adopted. Product management is the only role that’s deeply embedded in all three areas.
I was naturally inclined to major in computer science and engineering for my undergrad. While I was strong in software development, I wanted to develop myself into a more well-rounded technologist. So I moved to the U.S. to pursue a Master of Information Management and Systems (MIMS) at the U.C. Berkeley School of Information. Berkeley provided an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the societal impact of my decisions on how technology is designed, built, and used.
As my mentor AJ likes to say, product management is both art and science. The art is all about situational leadership, influence, and the ability to drive outcomes despite imperfect conditions. Science is the technical knowledge and analytical skills you bring from areas within product development, like UX research, systems design, and data science, as well as areas outside product development like sociology, economics, and operations. PMs don’t necessarily make all the decisions — they just ensure the right ones get made. One’s ability to make better product decisions is ultimately limited by the scope of understanding of your problem space. So I think the more perspectives you bring into product management, the more you get out of it.
It was really important to me to be a part of a company that does well and also does good. I had always admired Palo Alto Networks as one that was working on the cutting edge and also making a difference in the world by keeping everyone digitally safer. When I encountered the PMA job listing on Berkeley’s internal careers site, I was immediately excited and applied right away. That’s how it all started!
About the PMA
The Product Management Academy is a two-year, rotational PM program for new grads. The rotations provide breadth and depth of experiences and give exposure to different customer challenges we solve as a company. It also introduces you to the unique problem-solver style of product management here at Palo Alto Networks. It fosters a high degree of analytical and product rigor by virtue of being on high-impact projects where you will be constantly challenged to deliver different outcomes while learning by doing.
Each year, the PMA welcomes a small class of six to eight PMs. The close community aspect is one of the most important things to me about it because we all support and learn from each other. Not only that, but the mentorship I’ve received from product leaders throughout Palo Alto Networks has been tremendous, and it was an important part of why I chose the program.
There’s really no prescribed path to a successful product management career. Everyone creates their own through their unique backgrounds and experiences. In a way, we’re all trailblazers! If you’ve realized product management is the right role for you, then I think the PMA is a fantastic way to start. We move very quickly and at a high level, so you have to be ready to hit the ground running. It will accelerate your growth and allow you to take the next step towards becoming a product leader.
In my first rotation, I was placed on one of our most successful products: WildFire. I’ve enjoyed the full spectrum of opportunities working across the company to strategize key areas for business growth, writing specs for new features, defining key performance indicators (KPIs) for the next stage of my product, and helping deliver a platform to general availability (GA). When I took the job as Palo Alto Networks’ first PM in the PMA, I couldn’t have imagined the professional fulfillment I would achieve just in this past year alone.
Working at Palo Alto Networks
A huge draw for me joining Palo Alto Networks was the scale at which our products affect customers. As the world’s leading cybersecurity company, we help protect over 70,000 organizations, who then serve millions of people like us around the world. We are customers of our customers. By protecting them from adversaries, we, in turn, protect our own digital way of life. The benefits of working for an industry-defining company where you can grow and try new things is invaluable. It’s still early days for us so I’m constantly excited about what we do next.
Enjoy the Ride
As a Customer Success Engineer for Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma Cloud, I wear three hats, which I wear interchangeably each day: One is as my customers’ trusted advisor providing guidance about how we can best address their needs with our products. One is as a trainer for other employees within the company as well as for new customers as they onboard with our products. And the third is one that puts me in a support role for existing customers so they can overcome tech challenges. Every customer is in a different stage with our products, so I’m continuously changing my “hats” each day, which makes every day interesting — there’s never a dull moment, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Although I have only been with the company a little over a year, it feels like I’ve been here for years, and I mean that in the best way possible — the learning I have achieved and expertise I’ve been able to gain in my short time are incredible.
Our Global Customer Success department is what we call a speedboat — this means we’re a self-contained unit that is empowered to be agile and move quickly ahead. In this analogy, there’s constant wind coming at us and we need to speed ahead to lead the way, deflect hazards in our path, and deliver results.
But for me, I think of working in GCS as being like a roller coaster. Personally, I’m scared of roller coasters. I’m always afraid I’m going to fall off. But every year on my birthday, I go to a theme park and ride one, just to prove to myself that I can do it. Every year, I feel that anxiety while I wait in the queue to get on the ride, and I wonder why I’m doing this to myself. The waiting is stressful. But then after I ride, I’m exhilarated and glad that I did it, and I’m ready to ride it again. In some ways, this is like my work. In Customer Success, we have a lot of customer meetings to get through each day to make sure they’re getting the right and expected value from our products. The anticipation of what challenges they’ll bring can be scary sometimes — you don’t know what you’re going to get, and sometimes you’ll encounter a challenge you’ve never faced. It can be overwhelming. But then when I speak to my customers and earn their trust, then watch their progress with the products, it’s so exhilarating and rewarding. Then I think, “I’m ready to do that again!”
On our team, Customer Success Managers (CSMs) and Customer Success Engineers (CSEs) work closely together — the CSMs hand more of the account management and customer service whereas CSEs deal more with the technical challenges. And we definitely complement each other. But when I was hired, this was a new department and I was given the opportunity to set the scene for building the team. In my mind, CSEs also must provide that customer service. We can’t just be siloed to our headphones and screens. For me, the customer-facing component is key. Building relationships with customers is a daily necessity — they need to trust that I’ll be honest with them and see that I take their success with our products personally. To be able to say, “This is the solution I know you wanted, and we’re going to work together to make sure you achieve it,” and to forge an ongoing relationship with them is amazing. Because we’ve gotten to know them — what their needs are, how they use the products — we’ve been able to tailor solutions to each customer. There’s a continuum of care we need to provide our customers, which means we’re available when they need us and we pay close attention to them, not just because they’re our customers, but because we have that relationship and I care about their success.
Always Learning
I didn’t start my career preparing to work in Customer Success; I began in system administration, then storage administration. Prior to joining Palo Alto Networks, I provided support and consulting for storage solutions and automation projects. However, I served as a liaison between engineering and our support center, helping tech support to solve high-level, complex problems, or helping engineering to understand systemic issues with the product so they can fix them going forward. This is how I discovered that I loved that customer success component. I knew the cloud was where everything was headed, so I became passionate about teaching myself everything I could about the cloud. I’m the kind of person who needs to constantly learn and be challenged.
That’s when I began looking for a challenge and discovered Palo Alto Networks’ Customer Success role in GCS. Because I had the technical and customer-facing background and could demonstrate my ability to learn quickly and excel in this role, they gave me a chance to prove myself, and I’m so happy they did.
If you’re interested in pursuing this career, I don’t believe you necessarily have to have cybersecurity experience, but you should understand the basics of it while “knowing” the cloud and cloud native designs in and out. If you’re familiar with one or two cloud providers and can work your way around them, and perhaps have certifications from cloud providers to demonstrate your knowledge, we need that — the rest of the technology is teachable. But you also need those soft skills. Can you interact effectively with customers and your colleagues? You can’t just be transactional and technical; you need to be good at interpersonal relationships as well. This is a company that will give someone who’s passionate and hardworking a chance, but be proactive and demonstrate that.
This job can be very difficult and even exhausting. But it’s also fun and so rewarding, and every morning I wake up excited to do it all again. Everyone should feel that way about their job.
Because I am someone who thrives on learning and taking on new challenges, I’m continuing to evolve in my career at Palo Alto Networks. I am now transitioning to a new role and expect to continue serving our customers with cloud-native security solutions. I am super excited to shift to the world of a Systems Engineer Specialist for Cloud Security (Prisma Cloud) and help our customers conquer cloud security challenges using our solutions. This new role also entails greater challenges in new areas of the organization, which I aim to master. For me, this has been the natural, measurable journey that I have been striving for. While there are some key differences in shifting from Customer Success to Specialist Systems Engineering, the experience and relationships collected along the way will definitely help. I’m excited to take this next step of my career with Palo Alto Networks!
In the Customers’ Corner
In my role as a Consulting Engineer with the Security Operations, or SecOps, team, I work with the sales account teams in the field. The SecOps team consults with customers about their security programs and how we can help them achieve better security outcomes. We also help account teams extend the relationships from the network security team into the Security Operations Center, or SOC. This helps drive the need to consolidate tools and adopt more of the Palo Alto Networks platform and best practices.
This is unlike any other team I’ve worked within this industry. We’re security people and are focused on security, but we’re more driven by successful customer outcomes and how we can apply our technologies. We’re not looking for ways to shovel tons of our products at them — instead, we’re looking for ways to make them more successful and confident in using our products, protecting their systems.
My team also educates and engages with the Systems Engineers and partners in the field on the various SOC use cases and trending security topics that are top of mind to our customers. What I enjoy about the role is that my day to day is rather dynamic. Every customer interaction is unique, and each one provides insights on how security concerns can vary based on industry. We are truly working to partner with customers as technical advisors.
Although many who work in cybersecurity come from a variety of backgrounds, I actually studied systems engineering in college and began my career in network security. In previous roles with other companies, I worked to help safeguard data for the financial services and insurance sector, and that’s where I first encountered Palo Alto Networks’ products. But more than the quality of the technology, what I was hearing increasingly from competitors and colleagues was about its great company culture. That gave me the confidence to take the leap and pursue a role with the company.
Family Feeling
Now that I’ve been with Palo Alto Networks for over three years, I can see what those people were talking about. If I had to pick one word that describes the company culture, I’d pick “family.” The family feeling here is what sets this company apart. Even though I work remotely, I work on a small team of just four consulting engineers, so we’re an intimate, close-knit group. I knew them all before coming to work here, and we already had a great rapport. I have the flexibility to work on my own as well as with the team in our offices when I need that camaraderie and exchange of ideas, so it’s the best of both worlds.
I really enjoy the fact that people in this company, at all levels, are encouraged to engage in dialogue and offer feedback, and that the managers have an open-door policy. But especially within my team, there’s a real openness and a sense of moral support. If they feel I’m struggling or if I need help, they have my back. All I have to do is show up and raise my hand; there are no dumb questions. Being that we’re a team of technical engineers, we’re the throats you choke when things go bad, so having people support you — whether it’s management, your peers, or the president of the company — show up at your meetings, try to kick down doors for you, and celebrate your successes, that is so important, and it’s what I love about working here.
That company culture is a big part of coming to work here too. You need to be someone who has the right aptitude and attitude, to learn and challenge yourself and be receptive to feedback. That’s part of why the interview and hiring process can be long; the company has really grown in the last year, with new acquisitions and larger staffs, but they’ve still successfully maintained that family-oriented feeling, so it’s important to be patient during that process because it’s part of what makes this company special, and it has paid off.
And it’s also important to know that this company values diversity. The leaders here recognize that the more people we include, the more cultures and backgrounds we have offering perspectives, and the stronger and more approachable we make the security community. It used to be that cybersecurity was viewed as a man’s world, but I’ve seen that changing, so my advice is just to show up. Ask questions. Stay curious. There is opportunity in this industry if you’re willing to work hard for it.
The Unexpected Advantages of Working at Home
I am Senior Manager SQA (Software Quality Assurance) Engineer for our Cortex XDR group and I’ve been at Palo Alto Networks for almost 2 years. My wife, Maya Kats, is a Head Nurse (with a capital “N”!) in charge of the Neurology Department but since COVID-19 her responsibilities have shifted to a supervisor role at Assuta Ashdod Hospital to support COVID-19 patients.
This is the first time, as an adult, married with children, that I am lucky enough to spend more than a straight week at home with my family. With two kids who are 9 and 12, the routine is much more complicated and since my partner is going into work, I get to be in charge most of the days. There are many unexpected advantages during this period and I’ve realized that this is probably a once in a lifetime experience.
We didn’t manage to arrange the home office in time, so usually, it’s a sofa in my backyard or sometimes in my bedroom. I don’t want to lock myself in some room, it feels too claustrophobic, so I like having some space where I can work.
Between what feels like endless Zoom meetings that are interrupted by “Dad, I want to eat,” or “Dad, I’m bored, let’s play,” I’ve found that what works for me is not splitting up my time into work hours and home hours, it’s combining the two and balancing both responsibilities throughout the day. For me, I’ve found that it’s very important and efficient to connect over Zoom (the closest thing to an in-person conversation considering the current situation) versus connecting over emails or Slack messages.
I’ve learned, or to be more precise, I was reminded that my biggest problems and complaints are minimal compared to real-life problems and what my wife deals with on a daily basis at her job. I’ve realized that I am capable of many things I never imagined I could do by myself. Since COVID-19, cybersecurity now more than ever is important, and in many ways, the work has become more intense. However, my team has shown again that they are a very responsible, committed, and hardworking group of people, who are striving to get the best results in spite of so many obstacles. And last but not least I’ve learned that our Tel Aviv site is capable of doing anything and everything we decide to accomplish.
Navigating A New Routine
I am a Senior IT Systems Engineer in the IT Department and I’ve been working at Palo Alto Networks for 2.7 years. My wife, Viki, is a Deputy Manager of the X-Ray Department for Assuta Hospital in Ashdod and we have 2 kids, Nicole who is 6 years old, and Adam who is 3 years old.
Before this crazy COVID-19 period, I would go into the office every day. And, although I had the option of working from home when needed, I really preferred going into our cool office and working with my team in person. After a day at the office, I would commute back home and spend some time supporting my colleagues in the United States. Since COVID-19, my routine has changed.
Now I work from home every day with our 2 kids. My wife is very busy working at the hospital, so it is quite challenging at home at times. I’m learning how to balance my days as a dad and as an employee. The only time I get to work quietly is at noon, while my youngest child is sleeping and the older one is watching her daily movie, or in the evenings when my wife is back from work.
Since my wife and I work from home in the evenings, we already have a dedicated room with a working station. So didn’t have to upgrade anything special. I have a large deck with a 25″ screen which I connect my laptop to – not as comfortable as my 3 large screens at work, but does the trick 🙂
Throughout this, I have learned that there are advantages to working from home. Between attending Zoom sessions, managing my daily tasks and projects, and working closely with my teammates, I can be as effective working from home as I am working at the office. I’ve also learned to be more flexible with my working hours so I could spend more time with my kids while balancing my job. And one of the biggest advantages of working from home is, of course, the time saved on commuting.
Palo Alto Networks has provided support to all its employees and has set aside additional funds to make sure their employees are taken care of. I personally feel like whatever is needed for an employee to work efficiently will be provided. The entire organization understands this special situation and is really supportive of all employees.
An Ever-Changing Landscape
Trevor Coetzee, Director, Regional Sales, South Africa
I’ve been in sales for most of my life, and I’ve worked in sales in the cybersecurity industry for 19 years. What has kept me in this industry for so long is that the landscape is always changing. When I first began working in the field, I was making 50 or 60 cold calls a day, cybersecurity was just antivirus software and a firewall, and people were still doing data updates via CD and floppy disks. I was intrigued by the fact that security was increasingly important, and I realized that in this business, I would never get bored. What started with antivirus and firewalls shifted to content filtering, vulnerability management, compliance, and now 3,000 new security vendors handling all kinds of niche technologies. The threat landscape is constantly changing, and so does the work as a result. I got hooked very early on by the fact that I’m continuously learning, so I’ve remained in the industry. The only constant in cybersecurity is change, and that’s very exciting.
In my role as Regional Sales Director, I work from Johannesburg, South Africa, and oversee a growing cybersecurity market in the South African Development Community (SADC), a region comprised of 16 member states. Since joining Palo Alto Networks less than a year ago, I’ve watched this territory grow from where we had only four people on our team to now having almost 20 by the coming fiscal year. What’s most exciting to me about my role with Palo Alto Networks is the sheer speed of change, growth, and acquisition, as well as my ability to see the business as a personal franchise and to be autonomous while accountable in helping drive that growth.
Part of my job has been, over the last few months, to grow our team by bringing on talented individuals to help grow our presence in the region. I’ve always ascribed to the philosophy that you should hire people stronger than yourself, who can do the job better than you. I’m proud to say that we’ve assembled a team of tremendously talented individuals who each challenge and push each other, so that has strengthened our team as a whole. So in a very short space of time, we’ve jointly assessed where we need to go and where we want to end up, and we have the best metrics and processes for getting there. For me, that’s a success story.
What Sets Us Apart
I’ve worked for a lot of other companies in this business, but when I was ready to make a career move, Palo Alto Networks really stood out in terms of its technology, its organic growth, its research and development, its excellent leadership, and its customer relationships. Even before coming to work here, I noted that it continually hired excellent leaders, and its Net Promoter Score (NPS) and CSAT Score — which are crucial measures of customer satisfaction — were always in the top quartile, which is beyond great. Its execution, day in and day out, in all the ways that count, was very appealing to me and told me this was a company I could truly grow with.
Also, the other companies I’d been with are mature, stalwarts in the business, while here is uncapped potential, a company that drives technologies and revenues like a pre-IPO startup, and that startup mentality made it very exciting for me to get on board. We have the backing of a huge organization, but with the ability to be entrepreneurial.
One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was that it’s the little productive actions, repeated consistently over time, that add up to the difference between failure and success. What I have observed about Palo Alto Networks is that it consistently, successfully executes those productive actions that to me spell out success and longevity for the company, and for my career here.
I have also always believed in the principle of the Say:Do ratio when it comes to leadership — it refers to the difference between what you say you do and your actual execution. There are plenty of leaders who talk a lot of hot air and deliver nothing, but the leaders with strong Say:Do ratios, the ones that do what they say they’re going to do — those are the ones you go to war with, and that’s one of the things that really stood out to me about this company. The leaders maintain integrity and have a high Say:Do ratio, and that tells me I’m in the right place.
Using Data to Improve Our Customers’ Experiences
Working in data science wasn’t a career that I ever aspired to, although technology has always been a part of my life. In fact, when I was growing up, my mother worked for IBM, and I still remember the first computer she brought home.
Before taking this job, I had worked for several companies doing market research, community management, and product management. Just prior to joining Palo Alto Networks, I was co-founder and VP of Product & Marketing for three years for a startup called Shocase, which was winding down its business. I knew someone that worked for Palo Alto Networks, and he reached out to me and said, “I’m looking for a junior version of you to come in and handle market research.”
It was great timing for me to transition away from the startup, so I told him, “I know someone who’s not a junior version of me but is the real version of me! Why don’t I work as a consultant for you on whatever you need until you find someone full time?”
So I did some consulting work for a couple months, as an independent contractor, and eventually I became a full-time employee, and I really love what I do.
What is Data Science?
When I first joined Palo Alto Networks, my team did traditional market research into consumer behavior with regard to cybersecurity. We used the basic tools of that trade — surveys and focus groups, that kind of thing. We still do that, but we’ve taken it a step further. As new members of the Marketing Data Science team, we combine our market research with data science in order to better understand the customer experience.
Like a lot of companies today, Palo Alto Networks utilizes technology to capture data about our customers. Obviously, as a cybersecurity company, the data we’re capturing typically pertains to the type of business they have, how they’re using and storing their sensitive information, and how their internet security is managed. Historically, our marketing data science team has been charged with building a variety of predictive models — lead rank scores, account rank scores, churn models, etc.
But now, under the Marketing Data Science umbrella, we’re all part of one team, so we can work together to ensure that the market research we collect is fed into the models the data science experts are building in order to make them as accurate as possible.
As part of this, we use a customer feedback, measurement, and management system called Medallia. We collect feedback across key touch points that customers have with Palo Alto Networks. These include surveys about onboarding, relationship, customer support, professional services, and customer success — every interaction we have with customers from the beginning — and we use that information in the data science models to determine the impacts of those interactions on customer value.
So what we’re really focused on is taking the customer experience to the next level. Everything we do revolves around helping people make better decisions, and taking better care of our customers. It’s about not only nurturing potential customers, but also ensuring that existing customers are happy, and their environments are better protected.
And that’s what makes me excited to come to work each day — that challenge of doing new and different things. I like to solve problems and take on challenges, so this job is really a perfect fit.
Company Culture
I had always been aware of cybersecurity before joining Palo Alto Networks but I wasn’t really aware of the ins and outs of the industry. I have a personal connection to it because I’ve been a victim of scenarios involving hackers — in situations when I took for granted that my personal data was safe, but it wasn’t. So the fact that we as a business can come in and solve those problems and protect people’s sensitive data and make customers more confident in interacting with others online, that’s extremely important.
I would say the biggest transition for me was moving from a business-to-consumer (B2C) company to a business-to-business (B2B) company. Before I joined Palo Alto Networks, I’d worked for a lot of different companies, but mostly they were B2C — selling products directly to individual consumers — and C2C, which is consumers selling to consumers. It’s a very different process to engage with business customers versus individual consumers. Here, we have a physical product that we’re building, and we have a Sales team that needs to sell these products, but it’s not like it’s something where they can pay and we hand it to them and we’re done. It’s a long lead cycle with a lot of people and processes involved, whereas in the companies where I’ve worked, it was more like, “Here’s my website; please go there to buy my product.”
Overall, I definitely had to get up to speed on what, exactly, the company does and how a B2B company works, and that was a bit of a transition. Fortunately, a lot of very generous people were happy to walk me through the details about how our products are different from those of our competitors. I think that the people here are very dedicated and smart, and they work together well. Even if you’re not working in the same group or department with them, they’re always very collaborative. They always want to help you. If you reach out to somebody with a question, they’ll respond to it. I really appreciate that collaborative nature.