Silver Bullet Podcast celebrates women in cyber security

Over the past year, Synopsys’ Gary McGraw has hosted 12 women making an impact on the security industry in his monthly Silver Bullet Security Podcast. The podcast features in-depth conversations with security gurus. Past guests include technologists, academics, business leaders, and government officials.

A year ago, McGraw set out to focus his efforts on finding some of the most impactful women in security. During the so-called Year of Women, he has interviewed women in a variety of industries and roles. They all have something very powerful in common: a passion for security.

Below we’re highlighting these 12 dedicated experts to see how they’re changing the industry.

October 2016: Dr. Marie Moe

The series launched with Dr. Marie Moe, a security researcher at SINTEF and an associate professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Her most recent work focuses on public safety and security systems impacting human life. She is celebrated for her work in medical device security. Since her own life is dependent on a pacemaker, her work is near and dear to her heart—literally!

Listen as Gary and Marie discuss her research
Follow Marie Moe on Twitter

November 2016: Lesley Carhart

Next up in the series is Lesley Carhart. She is the security incident response lead at a large corporation in the Chicagoland area, where she and her team work with digital theft, misconfiguration, and hacking issues. She has 17 years of experience in IT, 8 of which have been focused on incident response and digital forensics.

Listen as Gary and Lesley discuss incident response and digital forensics
Follow Lesley Carhart on Twitter

December 2016: Kelly Lum

December’s guest was Kelly Lum, aka Aloria. She is a security engineer at Tumblr and an adjunct professor of graduate computer networking and application security at NYU. She has 13 years of experience in computer security and previously worked in both government and the financial services industry.

Listen as Gary and Kelly discuss finding bugs versus fixing bugs
Follow Kelly Lum on Twitter

January 2017: Jessy Irwin

Jessy Irwin was the first guest of 2017, introducing the topic of human-centric technology and security. She is the vice president of security and privacy at Mercury Public Affairs, where she works tirelessly to make security and privacy accessible to the average person through education and awareness. An outspoken advocate, she writes and speaks publicly about security research, strong crypto, and security education.

Listen as Gary and Jessy discuss security education and accessibility
Follow Jessy Irwin on Twitter

February 2017: Kate Pearce

February’s guest was Kate Pearce, a senior security consultant within Cisco’s Customer Solutions division. Kate approaches security from diverse perspectives encompassing defenders, builders, assessors, and attackers. Her approach blends business, academic, and assessment contexts with a clear focus on evidence-driven security approaches.

Listen as Gary and Kate discuss gender perspectives in the security space
Follow Kate on Twitter

March 2017: Chenxi Wang

Next on our list of esteemed guests is Dr. Chenxi Wang. She is the founder of the Jane Bond Project and has built an illustrious security career with experience at Forrester Research, Intel Security, CipherCloud, and Twistlock. She holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Virginia.

Listen as Gary and Chenxi discuss fixing the diversity issue in tech
Follow Chenxi Wang on Twitter

April 2017: Cheryl Biswas

April’s episode welcomed Cheryl Biswas, a cyber security consultant focusing on threat intelligence at KPMG Canada. Cheryl strives to connect people within information security, with a focus on end users. She shares a passion for learning and security by blogging and speaking at conferences and through her social media presence.

Listen as Gary and Cheryl discuss work-life balance
Follow Cheryl Biswas on Twitter

May 2017: Kelly Jackson Higgins

Next up is Kelly Jackson Higgins, the executive editor at DarkReading.com. She is an award-winning veteran technology and business journalist with over 20 years of experience as a reporter and editor. Kelly’s coverage of computer (i.e., cyber) security has led her to be selected as one of the top 10 cyber security journalists in the United States.

Listen as Gary and Kelly discuss changes in security-focused journalism
Follow Kelly Jackson Higgins on Twitter

June 2017: Ksenia Dmitrieva-Peguero

June’s guest was Ksenia Dmitrieva-Peguero, a principal consultant within Synopsys Software Integrity Group. She is a subject matter expert in a variety of software security practices, including static analysis tool design and execution, customization, and deployment. She is also an expert in the areas of penetration testing and threat modeling. She speaks regularly at events around the world on topics such as HTML5, CSP, and JavaScript.

Listen as Gary and Ksenia discuss software security awareness
Follow Ksenia Dmitrieva-Peguero on Twitter

July 2017: Pavi Ramamurthy

The July episode features Pavi Ramamurthy, who manages the security ecosystem at LinkedIn as senior information security manager. The Security Ecosystem team holds much of the responsibility for software security at the firm, including software security training, awareness, bug herding, application vulnerability response, and more. Pavi has over 20 years of experience in software engineering and development and 10 years of hands-on security experience.

Listen as Gary and Pavi discuss whether a background in development makes you a better software security resource
Follow Pavi Ramamurthy on Twitter

August 2017: Wafaa Mamilli

August’s guest was Wafaa Mamilli. She is the vice president and chief information security officer (CISO) at Eli Lilly and Company, where she leads a global, enterprisewide information and product security organization. Before being named CISO, Wafaa held several international leadership responsibilities across Lilly, including a stint as information officer of their diabetes division.

Listen as Gary and Wafaa cover cultural differences in technology
Follow Wafaa Mamilli on Twitter

September 2017: Nicole Perlroth

Nicole Perlroth covers cyber security for the New York Times. Nicole is the recipient of several journalism awards for her reporting on efforts by the Chinese government to steal military and industrial trade secrets. She is currently working on a cyber security book, “This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends,” for Penguin/Portfolio (2017).

Listen as Gary and Nicole discuss life as a cyber security journalist
Follow Nicole Perlroth on Twitter

While the information security industry comprises only 11% women, these 12 snapshots of women in security are only one example of the inspiring impression that women in the industry have. How can the security industry empower and drive more women to join the security ranks? Visit the Synopsys community to tell us your thoughts.