That's a great question. Eso Currently, I manage. I work at a assess based a company assess company, Um, that called work front, and they build a cloud based project management solution. I manage their information, security and application security teams. Um, how did I get to where I am today? Really? You know, I think the biggest thing is, um, you know, really, I In terms of my experience, I think my my skills was a big part of that as well as my network. I was able to get into information security via investment banking. I went to school in computer science and, you know, by chance was ableto start an internship at Royal Bank of Scotland and got into information security via that way. Really, really liked it. Found that this was this was my key calling and, you know, really move forward with that. I've made a lot of friends and a lot of networking along the way there to Andi. I've been able to really partnership with a lot of folks there who'd given me the opportunity to perform and excel on toe, learn new technologies, new things, um, you know, and you know, certainly as I've gone through in my career, there have been, uh, challenges that have that have really shaped me. And I've been really appreciative of that. Um, you specifically asked about incidents and experiences that shaped my career path. Um, I will share with you one incident that, you know, they're really one experience or that really taught me, You know, the value of, um, you know, the value of your reputation and also, you know, the value of, uh, your branding, because just as much, you know, I think I'm speaking with engineering students as well. You know, as well as business students, for the most part. And I think in any field that you are having a reputation, you know, having basically, um, having your personal brand is going to be quite important in your career. Um, So this this specific story was as responsible for the implementation of ah, a specific product and this product was part of a knacks s control review, access control review task. Um and so there's a lot of things a lot of you know, a lot of partners partnerships. I was I was, uh, implementing and you're working on the deployment now. It just so happened that there were certain features of this of this product that and that that I felt were not needed and because I really wanted to save our budget, you know? So I was given a budget for this implementation. Andi, I really wanted to reduce the impact to the budget, and so s so basically, you know, what I did was Oh, you know, this this feature this feature isn't really needed. Uh, but what I did not do was communicate with the stakeholders that I was gonna make those cuts because I thought I was working off of the assumption that I wanted that that I They wanted me to save money. Uh, eso lo and behold, we had the deployment. It was successful, but come to find out when using this product, there are certain key things that executives that had expected that were not there. Um and you know, a to bottom of the report to show that I saved the company $200,000. But lo and behold, the the results came back and they said, Yep. This was a successful product. Were able at project We're able to you utilize the product. But, um, but there's certain things that we can't do. And, you know, really, the whole key for us to use this product, Brian, was that it needed these features, these features that you had turned off and I was bummed on DSO My reputation took a hit, and I think the biggest thing is always communicate, communicate with your stakeholders, communicate with your peers Um, always seek to understand before you make any actions. So seek to understand that because your priority may not be the same as the stakeholders priority and, you know, nine times out of 10 what the stakeholder wants eyes what the company wants well on then, um and then third, you know that that that is in the end of the world, even if your reputation or personal brand who takes a hit, you can always seek to fix that, and there will be more projects. As long as you continue to work hard, continue to be a great communicator, continue to have empathy and, you know, and continue to have a good attitude and work. Um, that's gonna make the difference from, you know, being, uh, becoming a start engineer, becoming a star leader, you know, And, you know, becoming a CEO, possibly if that sure that you go

great question. Um, yeah. So this this is my second, um, this is my second management position previous to that Iran security operations at a a Health Health Savings Administration firm on DSO. I'm I love my job. I like being a leader, unlike building and running programs. So the responsibilities and decisions that typically handled so basically, the eso were primarily my team is responsible for theme. The three are cloud based products, so ensuring that our infrastructure continues to be protected. So we're we run the vulnerability management program, so ensuring that, uh, you know, we're running vulnerability scans, uh, where we utilize we engage pen testing firms, you know, um, to come to conduct tests these engagements on our on our perimeter, so ensuring our perimeter secure, also ensuring our internal infrastructure secure were also responsible for our different security policies. So, you know, uh, user user access on network configuration, all that good stuff. I also run our security operation center. So way partner with various companies that, you know, ensure that are logging is visible, that we have consistent 24 7 monitoring on our systems s I'm that as well on the other side I manage a team of application security engineers and so, you know, because this is a SAS based solution and it is primarily a development house. So we have security inserted along the our engineering pipeline. And so we utilize that conducting eso we use, uh, we use but crowd for our way. Use a bug bounty program in lieu of a nap. Pen test. Um, you know, I mentioned before we do, uh, security reviews of different epics. And you know that I think for a lot of computer science, students should be aware of that, You know, for the agile framework. Um, yeah, and all that. And so I'm really I have I have a great job. I'm doing exactly what I love to do. Andi, I feel I'm doing important work in terms of the work experience. The weekly work hours, It varies. I've certainly worked jobs that have been, you know, 60 hours plus a week. But I've been very fortunate with this position I'm about. I'm about 45 45 hours a week on bond. Currently, I am working from home, you know, do thio What's happening currently, you know, react with a global pandemic. Um, you know, so a to this time, No travel. Um, although I do have teams in Armenia and, um, London. So I'm based in Salt Lake City. Utah s Oh, I have a couple employees there. And so in the future, if things, um if we're able to travel restrictions were lifted, um, I might be able to travel there, but that that shouldn't be required. A lot of my work is done remotely, and Kent and I can excel remotely. Andi, I think Aziz a as, ah, student or engineer, you you would probably be expect toe have a fairly full workload. And depending on the industry you're in, you know, a lot of critical infrastructure. Um uh, industries, you know, such as energy health care. You might expect to work longer hours, but typically your pay is mawr and your, you know, your benefits are better to, um but, you know, I think that the key thing here is technical or financial institutions. They seem to be There seems to be the very good, uh, compensation. Good work, life balance and good benefits as well. Yeah. Thank you. Mhm.

fantastic. That's a great question. Let's see. I'll start with the challenges. You know, I think, um, the challenges here, the challenges that we have, it's relatively specific to security s. So I think with a lot of firms, you know what What I found are a lot of organizations tend to typically would build security. Or would you know what would build the security team on Lee until it is necessary? Um, and and that has been that has been a challenge to basically find that we have that there are a lot of legacy processes or, you know, legacy legacy procedures, um, that are running outside of security or secure visibility. Um, you know that Need to be that need to be brought in and do that. So that that is a challenge also. Ah, cultural challenges. Well, in terms of, you know, previously here, you know, here security coming in from into a firm that hasn't had really much of a security presence before or security in in and of itself was purely in a compliance role or regulatory compliance will, you know, which is very different from what I do. So there that there is also another Another challenge there in which, you know, really impressing upon the leadership and even, you know, my peers and employees across the organization, um, to really show to them the importance of, uh, of data security of information security not only from a compliance perspective, but also, you know, could have, uh, you know, could have, you know, financial implications as well in the event of a breach eso the approaches I've taken in dealing with these challenges. Really, it's back to my initial thing. It's all about communication. I think the best thing as a student, um, as you go out into the workforce, I would highly recommend to focus on these two things. So you've gone to school, Thio, you know, to really be. And you're the best of the best in terms of your technical and business acumen. Uh, eso you know how to program? You know how to code. You know, I had a secure workstations and, you know, set up, set up. You know, whatever kubernetes clusters and all that stuff. I think the biggest thing is, um what would be very beneficial to a student entering the workforce is to focus on these two things is to focus on communication s oh, really learn. Learn to speak, learn to write effectively concisely on. Also, learn to communicate with everyone You know how to communicate with engineers, but now learn how to communicate with sales people with, um, customer service And even with leadership because they're gonna be your stakeholders, they hold your budget. Oh, yeah. Learn how to talk to finance to, uh, they hold your budget. And if if you can speak to them directly, that is gonna be a really fast road to you in a to advancement in order because you again, back to reputation. You built a reputation on that. Um, you know, this is someone that we can communicate with. He understands the business, and he understands us. We need We need this person, you know, on on this project. We need them on this, this critical thing in order to progress. You know, our our our firm And the other piece is project management. Um, you know, there there are I know, you know, currently, there are a lot of progress program and project managers, um, in the field now, but I think it would be a really good skill for, um, you know, for new, um for for recent graduate the students, you know to take a class on actually or even look at getting, you know, project management certification. Because that would be that would be great skill toe. Have you'll always any work that you do is a task or project, and it would be really great toe have some form of methodology to apply to your to your work and work load in order to best to better organize your work that helps so