Recently the CTA hired Linda Beverly as our Lead Threat Analyst. We wanted to introduce Linda and share a little about her. Here is more about Linda in her own words.
Can you give us a brief history of your career so far?
My career has been influenced in part by having a few different areas of interest and having a love for working on and solving challenging problems. I value and embody being a lifelong learner and have officially been a college student longer than I might like to admit. My studies have been focused on pure mathematics, computer science, and statistics. I have been a teaching assistant and grader for a variety of university math and computer science courses including networking, cryptography, machine learning, and operating systems as well as spending one semester teaching two college algebra support classes.
I got interested in security through participating in capture the flag (CTF) competitions in areas of cryptography, steganography, open-source intelligence (OSINT), and log analysis. I have worked in corporate security engineering jobs (wearing many hats) and perhaps looked at “too” many logs, have been a research assistant working on geochemical modeling of metals and uncertainty quantification, and have contributed to open-source scientific software. All of this led me to a rather specific and interesting path with a focus on data science and machine learning within the domain of cybersecurity. I enjoy digging into threat data to uncover patterns and perform analysis as well as distil data into useful visualizations for a variety of audiences to drive/inform data driven decisions and initiatives.
I am a proponent of research, mentorship, and sharing opportunities. I have spent a good bit of time organizing and participating in groups to provide a welcoming and supportive environment for women and underrepresented students in data science, math, and computer science.
Can you tell us what attracted you to CTA?
Initially, the job description stood out but then within 10 minutes of my first discussion/interview I could tell that CTA had an incredible number of interesting challenges and opportunities and problems to work on and solve within an open, collaborative, and transparent environment. During the second interview, I knew that I had found the role and the organization that I wanted to join and contribute to by bringing fresh data perspective to extract new insights and add value for both current and future CTA members. I’m excited that I learn something new from my colleagues every day.
What do you hope to accomplish in your role at CTA?
What I like about working at CTA is that I feel enabled and supported to propose new ideas, grow professionally, engage in research, and make measurable improvements/enhancements. With that in mind, the drawing board with ideas/proposals of what I hope to accomplish is growing every day.
At a high level:
- Incorporate data science and data engineering principles into the full data pipeline to enhance data analytics and implement self-service analytics, dashboarding, and reporting.
- Grow the data team alongside increasing CTA membership (which also means more data) with iterative data products, insightful/collaborative analytics, and efficient workflows and processes.
- Perform collaborative research, mentor, and engage in outreach and efforts to support and increase diversity.
On a personal note, can you share any hobbies or other activities you like to participate in when not working?
For fun, I enjoy indoor rowing, nature photography, music production, mathematical art via machine learning, and I just recently added raised garden gardening.
My top two favorite books are Donald Knuth’s Surreal Numbers and Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.
To wrap-up I want to note that the mission, vision, culture, team, and opportunity to make meaningful contributions and have a positive impact on/in the cybersecurity community/ecosystem is why I came to CTA.
Welcome, Linda. We are delighted to have you on the CTA team!