So here we are at the end of the first day of the Career Hacking Village and I hope everyone has
had a great time. We were so thankful that one of our partners came up with this idea about looking
at what the future of the workforce would be about and how we can future-proof our careers.
We're definitely in a time of a lot of change and a lot of uncertainty and it is always good
to be thinking about what are the next steps and what can we be doing now to think about
future-proofing our career. I'd like to introduce Janai Marikovic and she has some great thoughts
for us to think about. Janai? Hi Kathleen, thank you very much. I really appreciate you giving me
the opportunity to talk about a topic that is near and dear to my heart. The title of today's lecture
is Future-proofing Your Career in the Age of the Intelligent Ecosystem and some of the skills that
we're going to need to build up this what we'll call an augmented workforce from the ground up.
Just a little bit of background about myself. I'm a Chief Information Security and Chief
Technology Officer for a company called Tyro Security. I've been doing cyber security for
20 years now and I've been a CISO for the last seven or eight. I've worked in a multitude of
different industries including media, entertainment, live sports, gaming. I've also worked in manufacturing,
healthcare, and robotics. I've got some extensive experience building cyber security
capabilities from the ground up. So everything from security, architecture, engineering, forensics,
and defense. I actually also had the opportunity to invent a cyber defense framework based on
American football. And I've worked for companies such as DirecTV, Electronic Arts, Beckman Coulter,
and investigation firms like Kralogera. So we are in what's called the fourth industrial revolution
and really what that is is it's this time marked by an interconnection of the physical, the biological,
and the digital worlds. And when these worlds integrate the way that they are today, it gives
rise to what we call big bang disruptions and ultimately transform entire systems.
The accompanying pace of technological development is going to be exerting this
profound change in the way that we live, the way that we work. It's going to impact all disciplines,
all economies, and all industries. So when these worlds mesh, you end up with what's called
distributed thinking. And that's where if everything is hyper-instrumented with sensors,
and these sensors have things like onboard artificial intelligence, and again they're
crossing multiple worlds, the digital, the biological, and the physical world, you end
up giving rise to this thing called distributed thinking. So what is an intelligent ecosystem?
It's heavily instrumented sensor networks that are integrated across this mesh of all three worlds,
so the digital, the biological, and bio networks. And it's accessible via natural user interfaces,
so think voice, gesture, and they leverage cognitive systems that ultimately make these
real-time decisions at the sensor level. And this all occurs across blockchain-enabled networks.
And so with all of this, at the end of the day, all roads ultimately, you know,
lead through cybersecurity. And we have our work cut out for us. Attackers are better at adapting to,
leveraging, and exploiting disruption. We operate in a world bound by rules. Their limits,
quite frankly, are their own creativity. And our ability to predict and prepare is more critical
than ever to deeply understand the forecasts and the trends that'll mold and shape the world
of tomorrow. So as cybersecurity professionals, quite frankly, we don't often fully understand
how these near and long-term technology trends culminate. We don't think, like world builders,
we don't think in universes. And as a result, we end up with these disjointed, unnatural approaches
to cybersecurity design, from everything from the cybersecurity worker's user experience to these
slow, debt-laden, and friction-laden enterprise security architectures.
So designing for cybersecurity of the future requires a willingness for us to explore how
these technical trends are going to manifest into this future world. And so what are some of the
iterative steps that we can take that will help us both operate in this world comprised of
intelligent ecosystems and how to protect and defend it? And since user-centric design starts
with the user, it's time that we consider the cybersecurity professional and our user experience
first. So there's this wonderful quote from Accenture, and it's, in the future, people don't
want more technology in our products and services. We actually want technology that is more human.
And technology-driven interactions are creating and expanding technology identity for the consumer.
And this living foundation of knowledge will be key not only to us understanding the next
generation consumers and, quite frankly, security users, but delivering these rich,
individualized experiences based on relationships in this post-digital age.
One of the quotes that I like is from Steve Jobs, and he was at a conference called D5,
and he said, I just want Star Trek, give me Star Trek. And why is that? Well, it's because technology
experiences in Star Trek are natural and oftentimes invisible and transparent. Tech is built into the
fabric of the ecosystem. And the ultimate trajectory is building these humanized technologies,
ecosystems that sense, that feel, that think, intelligent ecosystems. But to engage in predicting
the future, we need to take a look at how all of this is ultimately going to impact us.
And so these next generation security systems are going to leverage human-centered designs that
intersect with empathy and creativity, with consideration for us as the end user.
They're going to be accessed via these deeply personalized and anticipatory interfaces using,
like I mentioned before, natural language and voice.
And they are going to culminate into these role-based and purpose-based digital assistants
that are ultimately going to help us navigate employees through decision-making processes
and the explosion of data in these intelligent ecosystems.
And so as the AI and the cognitive solutions evolve in sophistication, you know, technology,
we too as cybersecurity professionals, we've got to figure out how ultimately that's going to affect
our jobs. How is it going to affect our work? What is, what's our work going to look like in
the future when the majority of our workload is automated? What are the skills that are necessary
to operate in these blended worlds where security professionals are working alongside assistants or
robotics? So we're going to have to learn how to operate faster. We're going to have to be capable
of applying new skill sets rapidly. There's going to be a change in the way that we deal with our
skills and we're going to have to learn, you know, a set of skills that place higher value on our
people skills, our business intelligence, our independent thinking, innovation, and especially
around creativity. So building the next generation security worker. So in this next section, we're
going to talk about some of the six sets of skills that I kind of wanted to delve into. I'm sure
through many other lectures, we've talked about, you know, traditional cybersecurity skills that
you need in order to move on to your next role or even some of the human skills such as
presentation and empathy and so forth. I wanted to take a little bit of a different tack
and focus in on skills that I believe security people are going to need
if you're operating in a world where much of our work has already been automated away.
So I broke the skills into two different areas. One are STEM skills and the other one is what
we'll call human skills. So the first one is artificial intelligence. So this is very
meaningful to me. In fact, I felt so strongly about this when I was working at a design firm
as their CTO. We designed a set of artificial intelligence training for everybody in the company.
As cybersecurity professionals, we're dealing with a couple of things here.
One, you're expected to protect and defend systems that have machine learning built into them.
So from the security architecture and design phase, to the way that we instrument and monitor
attacks against systems that have machine learning built into them,
to the way that you do digital forensics within these systems.
You have to have a foundational knowledge and understanding of AI in order to be able to do
your future job. But the other is that with the augmented workforce, you're working alongside
digital assistants. We already see this in industries such as supply chain and customer care,
where people have digital assistants, or in some cases robotics, that are working alongside and
taking over a lot of the day-to-day activities that they, quite frankly, are able to do through
automation. So in building and designing these systems, it's really key and critical for security
users to understand AI, not just from a basic level, but I would say ultimately through a mid-level.
The next are biological systems. So we already mentioned earlier that there's this intersection
between the physical, the digital, and the biological worlds, everything that comprises
the fourth industrial revolution. And so we're going to be working in worlds where you're expected
to design the cybersecurity controls and embedded biological devices. So example,
think of embedded medical tattoos. Think of ingestible robots as an example,
medications that have like nanobots and so forth that are built into it. And we're going to be
expected to design the security into those and to other bio interfaces and to wearables.
And so understanding that if those systems get compromised, what is going to, what can be the
impact to the human is going to be key. But it's actually a little bit more than that. You know,
the world's been around for what four and a half billion years and biological systems have had the
chance to evolve. And I already mentioned earlier that we oftentimes as security people don't think
in ecosystems, we don't think in world building. And so if we want insight, if you want create,
you know, insight into the way that you can approach building security holistically,
you can look at biological systems. A couple of examples, the human immune system. There
are several books out there that talk about human immune system architecture. And when we look at
the way that we design security systems, we oftentimes don't do it very holistically.
And so if you look at the construction of a human immune system and you correlate that,
there's a lot of insight that you can get from there. A couple of quick examples are,
it's frictionless and transparent. When your immune system goes off, it's because there's
something bad that's happening. You don't wake up in the morning thinking about your immune system.
Yet, those are the actions that we expect of end users when we design security systems for them.
So, you know, the future design of cybersecurity systems needs to be, you know, more transparent
and a lot less friction, you know, to the end user. There's insight into biological systems
in terms of the way that animals communicate with each other. And you can take insight from there.
There's, you know, just when you look at everything from ecosystem, terrestrial ecosystem design,
you can take inspiration from that in terms of the way that you approach the design of
cybersecurity. So both because we're going to be operating and designing cybersecurity into
biological systems, and because there is insight that can be gained from biological systems,
I highly recommend becoming more competent in biological systems is a skill that
we're going to see cybersecurity people need to do. User experience design. So I talked a little
bit earlier about what does the design currently, what does the user experience look like for a
cybersecurity professional? We've all experienced it. It doesn't matter what your role is, you're
in it at 100 applications plus. The context switching that we have to do is astronomical.
It adds a lot of friction to the process. It adds a lot of time to the process. And when you're
dealing with attacks that, you know, operate rapidly, and again, attacks that can cross
multiple worlds, then time is absolutely of the essence. And yet, and still, when we look at the
way that security architectures are designed for us as end users, they're problematic.
Oftentimes, you have to click through multiple screens in order to be able to get anything done.
They are not designed with the care that you design, you know, interfaces for, say, for
consumers. And so, since the future of our applications are going to have these voice
interfaces, these digital assistants built into it, we as security professionals understanding
how to design user experiences is important to us. But it's also important to end users.
When we think about what we ask of end users, you know, we don't oftentimes understand, you know, the
full experience that they have as part of their journey. And the things that we're asking them to
do as part of their day-to-day activities, or within the applications themselves, don't oftentimes
follow the best user experience for that individual. And so, understanding how to do UX
or user experience design, understanding how to map out user journeys and build security into them,
I think it's going to be an absolute key experience. Creativity and design. So,
creativity is still one of those skills that humans outperform machines. And so,
our ability to think outside of the box, our ability to apply creative processes to things
are going to be critical, especially in the world of cybersecurity. We're going to see
attacks, and we're going to see breaches, unlike anything we've seen in the past. Which means that
we're going to have to leverage different types of experiences and different ways of doing things,
far different than anything that we've done in the past. And so, a proper education and training in
the world of design, and a proper education and training in the world of creativity and things
like design thinking, I think are skills that we're going to have to see not only in STEM careers,
but definitely in the world of cybersecurity. We've already mentioned that attackers are really
bound only by the limits of their creativity, which means that we need to meet creativity
with creativity. Storytelling. One of the key things that we're going to have to build
as a workforce is our ability to communicate. Security people are oftentimes very good
at communicating with other technical people. But when we get outside of the technical realm,
and we start interfacing with our colleagues, when we interface with users, when we interface
with our management, when we interface with the board of directors, we think we are communicating
one way. Unfortunately, our audience is interpreting it a very different way.
And so, understanding how to storytell is going to be one of the key skills in terms
of communication and persuasion, quite frankly. Negotiation skills are predicated also on your
ability to storytell. Humans have been storytelling as a way to communicate information since the
beginning of time. And being able to reach into some of those ancient skills that we have.
And understand how to communicate these very difficult topics using mechanisms such as
storytelling. And understanding things like the hormones behind storytelling. The way that you
tell specific stories in order to elicit certain reactions that actually have hormonal responses.
And get the person to either feel like there's a call to action or have empathy with you as the
storyteller. All of that is predicated on our ability to be able to tell a good story. So,
storytelling is absolutely one of the key skills that we're going to have to build.
And empathy. So, empathy is I think oftentimes an underrated skill. And it's because we oftentimes
believe that you have it or you don't. And being able to build a bond with our users. In fact,
key to storytelling is our ability to be empathic. And so, if we're expecting our users,
our colleagues, if we're expecting management to understand what we're trying to communicate,
then we also have to be able to look at the world through their eyes. We need to look at the world
through the lens of where they're coming from. If we're trying to do proper user experience design,
that is predicated on empathy. If you're trying to do creative design, it is predicated on empathy.
So, everything that we do in the world of cybersecurity when we're trying to communicate
out and get people to align with us or take specific actions is our understanding of how to
look at the world through their lens unbiased. And work through designing solutions that ultimately
allow all of us to be able to work together. So, I wanted to end on this. And that's a call
to action. One of the, you know, as security professionals, you know, one of the things that
we really need to focus on is demanding oftentimes that the industry as a whole start looking at
security experience design end to end and holistically. So, everything from the way that
we interface with applications so that when you're instead of having to interface with 100
different applications, you're working with digital assistants that are capable of automating a lot
of the work and then representing the information to us in a way that makes in a way that ultimately
makes sense and makes our jobs easier is absolutely key. Expecting the people who design for us to
start thinking about, you know, our lives holistically end to end and not just trying
to solve this one problem with this one piece of technology, but understanding the stressors that
security people deal with and, you know, what their lives look like in the context of trying to
do this work is absolutely key. And so, I wanted to have a call to action that we demand more from
our vendors. That when they're designing for us, that they design as if they're designing for
a consumer. So, when we look at things like digital assistants and the way that digital
assistants have been built for consumers, why that type of experience can't be built for cyber
security needs to stop. We need to start demanding that proper UX design, that, you know, things like
natural user interfaces, that futuristic technology gets embedded into our user experience so that at
end of the day, you know, we're able to deliver the protection and defense services to our,
you know, to our companies and to the people that we're responsible for protecting.
And I wanted to thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about, you know,
intelligent ecosystems, some of the human and STEM-based skills that I'd like to predict that
we're going to need in order to operate in this future world. And thank you very much and enjoy
the rest of the conference.
Janine, thank you so much. That was really inspiring and sort of
really turning our heads around as far as, you know, we tend to push a lot as far as you need
this certification, you need to know this language, you need to know, you know, sort of hard science
kind of skills. And some of the things that we've been talking about over the last year or so has
been the skills that people learn when they're volunteering in conferences, learning how to
better communicate, learning how to be empathetic and the way you are practicing your empathy is by
being a volunteer and dealing with people from different cultures and different backgrounds and
understanding that you do have the capacity to be empathetic. You just need to learn how to
use it and constantly practice it. So these are really great, great pieces of information. I know
a lot of people will be talking to our career coaches over, you know, today and tomorrow. And
I think that this is something that we can really touch on as far as what are the other skills that
everyone should be looking at as they develop their career. So thank you so much for this and
everyone have a great evening and we will see you all tomorrow at the Career Hacking Village.
Thank you. Thank you.