Curious who’s on the other end of the phone or helping you through your Cyber Essentials certification? Find out through our Meet the Team series.
Q: What is your role at ID Cyber?
A: Cyber Essentials Assessor and Technical Editor
Q: When did you join ID Cyber?
A: November 2022
Q: Can you describe your role at ID Cyber?
A: Most of my time is spent assessing Cyber Essentials applications and supporting applicants through the process. I also write and refine documentation, articles, and social media posts. Finally, I am an organiser and host of the monthly ID Cyber Sessions series, in which we interview people within and/or of interest to the cyber security community.
Q: What’s your favourite thing about working at ID Cyber?
A: It’s a recurring answer for this question, but my teammates! They’re friendly, supportive, and always happy to brainstorm anything tricky that comes up.
Q: How did you end up working in cyber security?
A: I focused on linguistics at university and then spent half a decade working in publishing, but always had a side-interest in security. I used my annual leave to tag along to conferences, learned things for fun on TryHackMe, made friends within the industry, and, just when I began to feel the time was right for me to leave publishing, the stars aligned and a suitable post became available at ID Cyber. I’ve been here over a year now and have never regretted taking the leap.
Q: What do you like to do in your spare time?
A: Reading, video games, and music. I’m that person who takes five books on a weekend trip ‘just in case’, who’ll happily plough 70 hours into a PlayStation game and then go straight into New Game+, and who can’t stop acquiring instruments (everything from piccolo and piano to didgeridoo and viola), despite the fact they are most definitely amateur at the vast majority of them.
Q: What’s your favourite dinosaur?
A: Since I work with words, I should probably say Thesaurus… but it’s Compsognathus. They’re about the same height as a chicken so I think they’re really cute (if a little bitey).
Q: Is there a book, blog, or podcast you’d like to recommend?
A: Jamie Bartlett’s ‘The Missing Cryptoqueen’ — a really engaging overview of a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme and its founder, who’s one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted