Interning at Cyber Threat Alliance
About the author: Divya Ganesan ’25 is an FSI Global Policy Intern with Cyber Threat Alliance. She is currently a student at Stanford University majoring in Political Science and Computer Science.
Today marks a month at the Cyber Threat Alliance full of learning, immersion and mentorship. Since arriving in DC, I have had the chance to not only join a close knit team at the Cyber Threat Alliance but also enjoy a community of friends at the Stanford in Washington house and take advantage of the networking and speaker opportunities around DC.
As a student interested in the intersection of policy and technology I was excited to work on the CTA team this summer to explore how government, non profit and the tech world intersect in this space. Pictured above is my work team out for lunch and ice cream. From left to right, Michael Daniel is the CEO of the Cyber Threat Alliance and former Director of Cybersecurity for the National Security Council under President Obama. Airon-Lin, Jeannette (my amazing supervisor) and Kate are on the membership and recruitment teams. So far, my projects have included international recruitment of cybersecurity companies, working with a coalition of non profits to create an incident response form framework and in the future working on a DEI guide for small cybersecurity company CEOs. My favorite part of the day by far is sitting in Michael’s office and bugging him about all the questions I have about his experience and the big cyber policy questions. I have noticed that DC is a world of acronyms and as such have been keeping a running glossary.
In addition to my work at the CTA, I have had the chance to take advantage of speaking, networking and speaker events all around the DC area with my Stanford Classmates. Below, we went to to an Asian representation in a government event.
I’ve also had the chance to go to cyber specific events where I can meet women in the field. The ideas that I am now interested in include how we evaluate cyber financial risk, SEC regulations regarding cyber reporting, and the responsibility of third party providers to report incidents to government agencies.
