Nov 13, 2020

Like many others we have observed first hand the positive
changes in the cybersecurity community being enabled by Mari
Galloway. In this OODAcast we look beyond those changes to find out
what makes her tick, revealing lessons applicable to professionals
in any stage of their career.

Mari is the CEO and a founding board member for the Women’s
Society of Cyberjutsu (WSC), one of the fastest growing 501c3
non-profit cybersecurity communities. WSC is dedicated to bringing
more women and girls to cyber and does so by providing its members
with the resources and support required to enter and advance as a
cybersecurity professional.

Mari is a practitioner herself with an academic background in
technology, multiple certifications, and, more importantly, years
of direct hands on experience in mitigating risk and enabling the
smooth functioning of enterprise operations.

She began her cyber career with Accenture where she excelled as
a Network Engineer, and also worked at several government agencies,
in the casino industry, and now in the cybersecurity platform
community. Her experience spans network design and security
architecture, risk assessments, vulnerability management, incident
response and policy development.

Mari is also the inaugural ISC2 Diversity Award winner for
2019.

In this OODAcast we discuss:

The Women’s Society of Cyberjutsu and how businesses and
individuals can get involved. We also discuss the niche of
technical hands-on experiences that WSC focuses on.

The Wicked6 Cybergames eSports event during Blackhat and Def
Con, which turned cybersecurity into a spectator sport.

Her background and how she seeks to find balance between
academic training (which she continues), training/certifications
(which she pursues with vigor). This discussion brings out a
character trait that also applies across her work and leadership of
WSC, persistence.

The foundational story behind WSC. The society was started out
of a need for more hands on training. The fist workshop was a fast
track to linux mastery session. Other workshops followed, including
sessions on reverse engineering. WSC has now expanded nationwide as
a community and offers a wide range of courses including sessions
that help young girls learn and grow and also help those who
already have a career.

As an example, she mentions Recorded Future was just brought on
as a sponsor, which lets them support the cause and also gives them
exposure to great upcoming talent.

Mari’s approach to leadership and decision-making (her approach
at WSC and as a practitioner is a collegial one, but focused on
results and benefits to others).

Her view of the cyber threat today and in the near future (which
includes more of the social engineering and phishing threats that
play to our emotions). Ransomware and insider threats are also
still growing.