In this episode, Terra Cooke, Cybersecurity Governance and Risk Compliance Manager at Boom Supersonic. She is also a huge advocate for black women in tech.

To begin, Terra shares that she has been in the cybersecurity field for 15 years. She shares how she got interested in the cybersecurity field as a young person in the dial-up days. From a very early age, she knew she wanted to be in tech. Her background is in network security and she earned a very early cybersecurity degree at college. Her first job out of college was as a Information Systems Security Engineer at the NSA. In 2014, she was offered an auditing position elsewhere, where she stayed for several years. One of her favorite things about auditing is seeing people experience their own “aha moments”. Then, Tara gives listeners an idea of what a typical day for her looks like. As a GRC, she is often wearing many different hats throughout the day.

Then, Terra shares that she refers to herself as a “magical girl” because she is always able to execute the tasks she is faced with. Within the boundaries around her, she does whatever it takes to execute a vision. We all have our own strengths and weaknesses and Terra’s happens to be executing. She loves to collect data to assist her in this execution. She is also inspired by the Black Girl Magic movement several years ago. Then, she normalized the idea of setting professional boundaries. One of the most important things for GRC professionals to avoid while evaluating vendors is to buy tools simply for the sake of buying them, and ending up with poor implementations. Next, she shares her own process for looking at new vendors. Before wrapping up, she identifies the needs within the cybersecurity industry. Simply put, we should all be treating each other as humans with mutual respect when speaking with vendors. Finally, our guest and hosts engage in a fun guessing game to reveal what career Terra would pursue outside of the cybersecurity marketing field.  

Links:

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