The Power of Mentorship for Women in Cybersecurity with Barracuda’s Siroui Mushegian

This is Textron tv. Hey everyone, welcome back here to another TechOne tv. I'm really happy to have this next guest on.

She's been with us on, she's been with us a few times before on Textron tv. I actually love her story. I'm gonna make her tell you our story if we can't.

'cause it's a good, it's a a good example, especially for a lot of our, uh, women out there who are breaking into cybersecurity. And, um, yes, it can be done and, and there is a path for you and you're going to hear what, as a matter of fact, that's what we're gonna talk a lot about today. But let me introduce you to, sir, we GaN sir, we, it's, it's so great to have you back on text, on tv.

Alan, thank you. It is such a pleasure to be here with you. I've enjoyed all of our discussions in the past, and I'm really excited today to talk about mentorship and of course to share my story.

So if that's what you'd like me to do, I will dive right in. Yeah, no, if you don't mind, let's, let's start with your story right off the bat. 'cause I I, it's a great story.

All right. I will. So, a long time ago in the land far away, uh, I thought I was going to start off in finance, to be honest.

So I, I didn't see myself in a world of technology or cybersecurity. That didn't cross my mind. I thought I was going to land in a field of finance following in my father's footsteps.

And so I tried that for a few years and I realized that was not for me. I wound up working for a small French software company in New York City in the mid nineties. And I, I loved it.

I did a little bit of everything. I built computers, I sold software. I helped design the front end of that software.

Uh, I did literally everything you can imagine. And I knew that that was where I wanted to spend my career. I had the good fortune of finding my next spot at the then magazine Division of Time Warner, time Inc.

And I spent 13 years there, and I grew up through that industry. I saw, uh, magazine, uh, ad revenue increasing, and I also saw it decreasing. I was there through the A OL Time Warner merger.

I was there through some incredible historical events as well. Um, some, uh, you know, some things that will tug at your heartstrings for sure. But it was there that I realized and recognized the importance of cybersecurity.

It was there when cybersecurity really started to become super important, and that's when Sarbanes Oxley Socks became something that publicly traded organizations needed to have compliance with. And I became the person that was the Go-to, for providing all of, you know, all of the compliance needs for sox, for Time Inc. So that was, uh, that was when I recognized that this was something that was super important.

Um, from there, I went on to work at incredible organizations like Ralph Lauren, and, uh, I went on to work very closely with and partnering with the cybersecurity organization at Ralph Lauren, um, providing all of the cyber standard cybersecurity standards with the CISO at Ralph Lauren. I went on to help build the cybersecurity program with the CIO at the National Basketball Association. So when I started there, there was not a cybersecurity program.

And, uh, and I worked with my boss who hired me to help build one. Um, and now it is an incredible organization. Um, from there I went on to work at PBS and other places, and now I am at the illustrious Barracuda.

Um, and it is, uh, it's an incredible place to be because cybersecurity is so important. And, uh, you know, just to be at a place like this where I can help, you know, other people understand the importance of cybersecurity and, uh, you know, be able to use all of our products is really incredible. It's like a pinch me moment, honestly, every single day.

Fantastic. Um, Sarah, so I, you mentioned, you know, to use the Barracuda products, I think most of our, more than most, almost everyone in our audience is insert the Barracuda. A lot of us may think, oh yeah, those are the people who help me with email spare, or those are the people who, I don't know, DLP or something like that.

Barracuda actually has a full suite of products. At one point it was just appliances. It's more than appliances as well.

If, if you wouldn't mind, give us an idea of the scope of the product. Yes. Offering some Barracuda.

Barracuda is the leading cybersecurity platform providing complete protection from complex threats for resource constrained organizations. So it's not just email security anymore. It's not just, uh, you know, appliances.

It's ev, it's everything. It's the full spate of everything you would need in order to protect your environment. Email protection, as I said, data protection network application managed XDR so much more.

Each of those areas has a depth of resources and tools that will help every organization protect themselves from all kinds of cyber threats. Absolutely. Yeah.

All right. If it's okay with you, I'd like to kind of switch gears and jump into our topic of discussion today. Right.

Let's do it. And, you know, I've been in cybersecurity 30 plus years, long time, and I've seen a lot of water under that bridge. I've seen a lot, especially as it relates to women in cybersecurity.

And, you know, I remember being at Black Hats where women felt afraid that they were gonna be assault. I'm not kidding. They were gonna be assaulted.

And, and I think a lot of people like me in the industry were horrified, but we also recognized a lot of it was that bad people, you know, stupid bad things happened. There were a lot of people who, in the cybersecurity industry for whatever reason, didn't even know how to talk meaningfully or respectfully, or, and I don't mean to respectfully, like, I'm gonna ask you on a date or something. You didn't know how to treat a woman as a peer.

How's that sound? Right? No, it's, I, I understand what you're saying.

I do. I've been around for a long time also. Mm-Hmm.

And, and so sometimes even with good intentions, they were wrong. And then there were some people who didn't have good intentions and, and were doubly wrong. And, and it made it, it made it really, really hard for women to break into this field.

It's almost like for a woman to be successful in cybersecurity. I mean, it was like unnatural. And it, and it shouldn't have been for too long.

And we've made a lot of progress. I'm not, I'm not saying we have, I, I see it in our demographics, like on Security Boulevard and stuff. We do, but it, it's still not as easy as you think.

And the number one thing we hear is just not even sure where to begin. Right. I went to school, I got a degree in cybersecurity, but you know, they, they wanna, unless it's, you know what, quote unquote DEI hire, they, I don't get the right time of day.

I don't, I can't network. And it seems to be a boys club. You are a woman sitting here in a position of success, right?

So let, let's hear a little bit about your advice to want to be cybersecurity professionals out here and, and not only women, all minority communities who are underrepresented. 'cause there's a common thread that runs through it, but women in particular, and, and the importance of mentorship in this, right? This is one area where I think we have done good.

I know many, many successful women in cyber who spend a good amount of their time, time mentoring the next generation. Yeah. The next group.

So let, let's hear your talk. I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I, I, I hear a couple of themes in that, uh, in that question that, that number one, um, uh, you know, some of the recommendations that I would make about how to kind of get yourself into the industry, and number two, what you can do about mentorship in general.

And so I'll, I'll start with how you can get yourself in. Uh, so if you're, uh, you know, starting out in your career and you're trying to figure out how to find your way into a job right now, it's very tough. And so I, you know, I'm trying to help a couple of people right now get their first job in cybersecurity or in computer science in general.

And it is not easy. Um, and first of all, you have to stay at it. You just have to not let anything get you down.

So that's number one in today's world. Um, in general though, if you are from, uh, you know, if you're coming up through an institution, you know, higher learning, you need to leverage your network through your school, number one. And number two, leverage networks like LinkedIn and continue to build that around you.

Number three, wherever you are geographically, there are people in your jurisdiction who are in cybersecurity, and you should be so bold as to get to know them because they will help you. You will find someone like me who you don't know from anyone else, who will gladly help you and take a phone call from you and try to put you in touch with someone in their network. And, and just being tenacious is very, very important.

Not giving up on yourself, believing in yourself, and just continuing to take that forward every single day. And it's, sometimes it's just a numbers game. Every day I will apply for another job every day I will see if there's another internship I can get involved with.

Every day I'll see if there's something I can do for a company, and maybe it will be an unpaid situation, but I will get some sort of, uh, experience that I can add to my resume that will allow me to have, uh, you know, another thing that I can do that will increase my network so that I can continue on with my career. But it's, it's a multi-pronged approach that you have to have. So that is, uh, you know, just, it's, it's really just hard work and sometimes grinding it out and building the network around you so that you feel really supported and you know that you're not alone.

Because there are people like me who want more of us, you know, of all of us. You know, it's, it's not just me alone. It's having the world with people who are different than me, um, that will make it better.

So we, we all, I know I feel that way. I know many people around me feel that exact same way. So that's my recommendation on how you get into this, to this industry.

And then in terms of mentorship, um, it, you know, early on I recognized I had this unique privilege really to help people. And it happened when I left Time Inc. I was there for 13 years, I mentioned, and Time Inc was a very interesting, uh, set of circumstances because there were a lot of people like me who had been there for a very long time.

Um, people loved working there, and not a lot of, there's not a lot of churn, not a lot of turnover. And when I left, uh, my colleagues and and friends were shocked because, you know, we were all lifers really. And they recognized that, you know, ad revenue was going down, monetizing digital ad revenue was becoming more difficult.

And it was likely that the magazine industry was going to go the way of the Dodo bird at some point. Um, we probably needed to figure out the next step of our lives. Um, I started to get calls from, from my colleagues, and I would take every single one of them, and I would meet them for coffee or for lunch or dinner.

And all of a sudden I was kind of like, had this little cottage industry after work, or, you know, after hours where I was just meeting with all of my former colleagues to let them know that they could do it. You know, like we all thought that our jobs were so unique at timing that there could never be another one of them in another company. But that just simply wasn't case.

And it was then that I knew that I had this little secret superpower that made me feel so good to share. And I've taken that with me every place that I've gone and, you know, and, and expanded on it, especially with women and females in this industry, because I know that it's such a difficult thing to be in, uh, you know, in a particularly a male-dominated in industry. And I, I wanna provide inroads for females where it's been more difficult for us.

So I take every opportunity I can and, uh, and I love it. It's great. Absolutely.

You know, I, I've dealt with a few mentors. I I do a lot of mentoring myself, right? And I'll be candidly here on here, I help a lot of people.

Um, I, I really think that that's part, I'm kind of the payback, right? For success in this industry. And, and you're, it's kind of your duty to help.

What I, what I often, like, I wish I could maybe, well maybe one day I will write a book on it, but I would, I would tell people that your mentor is not there to get you a job. If you're lucky enough where your mentor can actually get you a job, that may not, that may not be your mentor that winds up being your boss or your boss's friend or something like that. And, and that's not the sole purpose of a mentor.

A mentor is there to help you grow your career and make you a more valuable asset in the market, or help make you a more valuable asset in the marketplace. But ultimately, you know, God helps those who help themselves. And you gotta put in the work to be more valuable, to be a better, uh, ideal candidate for positions to, to, to acquire the skills that are at such demand, right?

I can tell you what I see, what I hear you can tell them, right? Because as I mentioned, I think in, when we were off camera, specifically when we talk about women in cybersecurity, the last thing they often want to hear is from a man about what they should do as a woman to get ahead, right? Because no matter how much I empathize, or I may think I'm, I'm cool, and, and, and, you know, with it and understand, I don't, I've never walked a half a mile, let alone a mile in those shoes.

Frankly, I don't know how my wife walks in her shoes. But, um, with that being said, right, it's important that women have women as role models, as mentors who have walked in those shoes, who have walked those roads and could help them, you know, find their path. But it's not, it's not to hand out jobs.

It's not, you know what I mean? And, and so for those of you out there looking for mentors, you gotta really be honest with yourself about what you're looking for from a mentor, right? Because if you're just looking for handouts, that's not a mentor, right?

It's, it's good advice. It's good helping you find your road and help you choose your path. And I, you know, I, I think that's probably a big disconnect sometimes with a lot of people.

Yeah. Probably sometimes doesn't make much sense, but, um, it is, it is a disconnect. So this kind of fell to you naturally.

It just kind of was in you, it was innate in inside and do that. Yeah. You're a helper like that, a nurturer as someone said.

Um, but, but the how at, you know, you get, you talked a little bit about it, both for people looking for a mentor and for people looking to mentor specifically for women, any places, online organizations, organizations in person on how you can, how you match up with this. So there have been a, a couple of industry events that I've been to that have helped match people together in kind of speed mentorship rounds. One of them has been, um, at a recent event, uh, wonder Woman in Tech, which has regular events that, uh, they host all the time, and they'll do these speed mentorship rounds.

Uh, another one is, um, lesbians in Tech and Allies. They'll do the same thing. And you'll have these speed mentorship rounds.

There are a few places that you can attend events, and they will do, uh, they'll put people together who are interested in just having conversations. So that's one way you can do it, um, where there'll be a, a framework that's sort of built for you and you could just sort of enter into it. The other way is, uh, doubling down on some something that I said earlier where you go and seek it yourself, where you just sort of hunt around and find somebody that's got a story that resonates with you.

And, uh, you know, sometimes that's just, um, about finding people on, on the Almighty LinkedIn or some other means where you're reading somebody, uh, reading story about somebody that you find interesting. And maybe they'll take your email, maybe they'll respond to you. And, and that has happened for me where I've, uh, you know, just written a, a kind email of thanks, thank you for posting something that was helpful to me.

And, um, I'd love to talk more with you about if, if you have time. And not all the time will that person have the bandwidth to answer, but sometimes they will. So there's a few different ways of doing that.

And of course, in your, uh, you know, the more you go out and meet people, the bigger of a network you will develop. And it could be that somebody introduces you to someone else, but you eventually will have a bevy of people that you can select from, that you can choose who you would like to be your mentor, and sometimes your mentor chooses you. Absolutely.

And you can have more than one mentor too. You, and, and sometimes you should, because that mentor will help you with different things that are important to you, That the network Sari, we're way over time. I apologize, I'm looking at my clock here, and I'm supposed to be on another call a minute ago.

I, I need to, uh, it's always great to see you and talk with you. I, I feel like though we've never met in person, I feel like I know you for whatever reason my whole life. But, um, we'll have you back on Zoom.

We'll talk more. Well, thank you so much. It's always a pleasure, Alan.

Thank you for having me. And my pleasure, Ari GaN I'm getting better. The problem is, you're not on often enough, so by the time you come on again, I start all over again.

Chief Information Officer of Barracuda, you're on Text Drunk tv. We're gonna take a break on Techstrong, and we'll be back in a little bit.