Power players

Fabiszak credits one of her early mentors in cybersecurity who pushed her to push the limits every time – she keeps doing that today, yet also encourages her team members to find the right work-life balance.

When Wendi Whitmore applied to the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations, she was told that it wasn’t a role for her – Whitmore went on to conduct major computer crimes investigations for the Air Force and now heads up Unit 42, a leading threat research and incident response organization.

Said the CISO and VP of Trust at Reddit: "The internet felt like a space to explore. I wanted to protect and defend that. It felt like you needed to have a contingency plan for when things might go wrong.”

Said the chief security officer of Citizen Bank: “Being in the law enforcement and intelligence communities years ago has provided me with a very strong baseline into what we’re seeing the financial industry now.”

Said Code42's chief information security officer and CIO: “We don’t want to solely focus on stopping collaboration or blocking things, but more focus on securing the collaboration culture.”

Said Cybrary's chief impact officer: “It’s time to support one another by providing career support and access for all marginalized genders to obtain any position and title while working in cybersecurity and tech.”

Said Night Dragon's vice president of business development and strategic alliances of finally finding female colleagues: "At that point I realized how empowered I felt to have someone that resembled me in my world.”

"My goal is to shift the paradigm from plain-old public-private partnership to true operational collaboration; from information-sharing to information-enabling," the CISA director to SC Media. "This is in part the focus of the new Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC) — bringing the power of the federal government with the power of industry to prevent incidents before they occur, and ensure a rapid and coordinated response when they do."