Epic Women in Cyber — Dr. Wendy Ng
Wendy is OneWeb’s Cloud Security Architect Lead and subject matter expert. OneWeb is a communications company, leveraging Leo Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites for egalitarian broadband connectivity for all. She defined the strategy for Experian’s global DevSecOps transformation initiative. With a background in infrastructure and cloud security, she is a keynote speaker and thought leader with over 70 articles published. Wendy honed her technical consulting skills from experiences in a number of industries, including aerospace, healthcare, financial services, telecommunications, transport logistics, and critical national infrastructure.
She started her commercial career as a technical consultant at Cisco, before experiences at PwC and Deloitte. A trained medical and data scientist with practical experience in statistics, machine learning and AI algorithms. Wendy completed her doctoral studies at the University of Oxford in medical genetics and has contributed to the scientific community through peer-reviewed publications.
Articles and Blogs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendyng1/detail/recent-activity/posts/
How did you get into the cybersecurity field?
I’m very much a geek and there was no question my career direction would be in a technical field. I was also fortunate to have attended a school which embraced STEM subjects. I was particularly interested in how powerful computers are at analysing huge volumes of data and generating insights — a very useful analytics tool. I read genetics at university, leading me to a doctorate in medical genetics. This sparked an interest in complex traits, which relies heavily on statistical analyses and machine learning techniques.
Before my journey into IT and security, I had actually spent time working with viruses in a biosafety level 3 laboratory within the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. The extensive decontamination routine (which included handwashing) induced a bout of severe eczema on my hands, which made laboratory-based aspects of research difficult. However, research which involves statistical and computational based analytics is highly transferable. In today’s information-driven world, where we are flooded with an often overwhelming amount of information, the ability to critically review and interpret is a good life skill. This also includes the ability to understand large volumes of technical, often incomplete information; being comfortable with novelty; and using logic and evidence at hand to determine the best course of action.
As luck will have it, I started my commercial career with Cisco, which provided a fantastic foundation for what lay ahead. In fact, it was at Cisco that I realised connectivity is a major path for security issues. Furthermore, given the number of connected devices, I expect big data analytics and machine learning methodologies will form a key part of organisations’ cyber security defence strategy. These concepts, plus the analogies in behaviours of biological and electronic infections meant cyber security had a natural appeal.
What are the main challenges in this field?
For a cyber security professional, perhaps the main difficulty is the economic asymmetry between defenders and attackers, where it simply costs defenders significantly more to protect assets. I actually wrote a blog on the subject back in 2017. It’s a constant struggle to try and stay one step ahead of attackers. The industry is also extremely dynamic. As a consequence, professionals need to constantly update their knowledge. Having a curious mind is definitely an advantage for the industry. The flipside is that you will find an incredibly fulfilling career.
What are the things you’ve learned being a woman in cybersecurity?
Incidentally, there are actually more women in cyber security, compared to computer networking, which is where I started my commercial career. However, as I mentioned earlier, I’m very much a geek and being a woman in a technical industry means you have to get used to being the minority in a room. It’s actually a good position from which to build resilience and learn to be prepared.
What advice would you give to women who would like to join the industry?
I would definitely encourage them! It’s a fantastic career path, both intellectually and financially, with great prospects. And that is regardless of your gender. Although it is still a male-dominated industry, I’m encouraged by the fact more women are joining the industry. Hopefully this trend continues and I’m keen to do what I can to encourage girls and indeed women to consider a career in cyber security. It was not my first career, if I can do it, so can you!
Who are your role models?
I don’t have specific role models, although I have a tremendous amount of respect for professional athletes. I admire their discipline, perseverance and resilience. By the time they come into the consciousness of the general public, they would have been carefully honing their craft for many years, including sacrifices to achieve their goals. Other than that, my role models are everywhere. As long as you can be objective and open, I believe you can learn something positive from everyone.
If you could go back in time to your first days in the industry, what would you do differently or tell yourself?
I wish I made the move to cyber security earlier in my career. It’s been a truly wonderful journey. And has allowed me to combine my experience gained from medical genetics and knowledge from networking into a fulfilling career. In addition to fulfilling work where I am really able to use my expertise to help others, I’ve also had the opportunity to share these experiences through blogs, thought leadership articles and speaking at conferences. I genuinely missed writing after I left academia and knowledge sharing with the community is very much an academic mindset. Although I couldn’t stay in academia, at least not in the laboratory, I’m delighted that the skills I gained from my somewhat eclectic career can be leveraged so effectively in my chosen profession. To my younger self, I would have said, “Be confident, you’ve got this”.
