This weblog is a component of a bigger NIST collection through the month of October for Cybersecurity Consciousness Month, referred to as ‘Employees Tales Highlight.’ All through the month of October this 12 months, Q&A method blogs will likely be printed that includes a few of our distinctive workers members who’ve fascinating backgrounds, tales to inform, and tasks on this planet of cybersecurity.
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This 12 months’s Cybersecurity Consciousness Month theme is ‘Safe our World.’ How does this theme resonate with you, as somebody working in cybersecurity?
Now greater than ever, the usage of expertise is central to our lives. It’s the means by which we’re related with others within the U.S. and all over the world, each professionally and personally. With its ever-increasing ubiquity, cybersecurity threats proliferate at a fast tempo. Whereas technologists work to fight these threats, the onus is commonly on folks utilizing expertise to make use of it in methods that may scale back their vulnerabilities. Information and apply of fine cybersecurity and privateness steerage are important to defending ourselves and others.
Describe your profession pathway and the way that led you to the cybersecurity discipline?
I took a reasonably surprising path to get into cybersecurity. I’m a technologist at coronary heart – I earned a Bachelor’s diploma in Pc Engineering at North Carolina A&T State College, and Grasp’s and Doctorate levels in Pc Science at Auburn College. Over time, nevertheless, my research centered extra on the consumer expertise than the expertise itself. I developed a robust curiosity in human-centered computing and human-computer interplay.
With my background, I used to be an incredible match to conduct extra utilized analysis as part of NIST’s Usability Group. It’s a multidisciplinary group of researchers with backgrounds in areas together with pc science, cognitive science, and psychology, all working to champion people in data expertise. In direction of the tip of 2019, I joined the group’s Human-Centered Cybersecurity program, whose aim is to conduct interdisciplinary analysis to higher perceive and enhance folks’s interactions with cybersecurity programs, merchandise, processes, and providers.
Describe the position(s) that you simply play at NIST. What are some fascinating tasks you’ve labored on just lately?
I lead the Human-Centered Cybersecurity program’s phishing venture, the place we carry out analysis to know phishing in a real-world context by inspecting human susceptibility to phishing threats. Our focus is on human conduct and why folks do or don’t fall for phishing emails.
We additionally work to offer organizations with assets to assist their workers mitigate the phishing risk. Since 2019, we have now labored to develop the NIST Phish Scale, a technique for individuals who handle their group’s phishing consciousness coaching program to fee an e mail’s human phishing detection problem. The Phish Scale is a further metric utilized by organizations all over the world to offer context to the press and report charges ensuing from their phishing consciousness coaching workouts.
What’s your favourite half about working at NIST?
Working at NIST is nice as a result of I get to work with good individuals who have expertise in a wide range of science and expertise fields. I get to be a part of a neighborhood of researchers that care about and contribute to enhancing our society. It’s all the time refreshing to work with superb folks to resolve difficult issues which have an precise affect on all of our lives.
