Women in Security Podcast

Samana Haider is a Manager at Forcepoint's Security Labs. She is originally from Pakistan and has been living in Ireland for the last 16 years, and working in the security industry for the last 10 years. She graduated in Mathematics and Statistics, and holds a Master's Degree in Computer Science.

She believes in giving back to the community, and has been in the local school board for the last number of years. She has worked closely with the school management as well as the parents, working on various issues that are faced on day-to-day basis by the school teachers students and parents.

She is also involved with ISC2's  initiative for online safety for children, more  details can be found here: https://www.safeandsecureonline.org/

ISC2 Safe & Secure https://enroll.isc2.org/product?catalog=CCSE-SafeSecureOnline-Global

In this episode, I sat down with Laura Fitzgerald, Principal Legal Counsel in Forcepoint, a global cyber security company. Laura is a lawyer based in Dublin and leads the EMEA legal function and has responsibility for the global engineering Centres of Excellence. In 2019, Laura was the only Irish woman selected by Banco Santander for the World 50, where she attended UCLA Anderson School of Management Executive Leadership programme designed to prepare the next generation of global leaders for service as board directors and as senior industry leaders.

Joanne O'Connor brings her experience in public relations, UX, and project management to her current role as Cyber Security Training and Education officer at HPE. She is the lead of Cyber Women Ireland – which at a country level looks to encourage the advancement and capacity of women involved in all aspects of the Irish security sector and security community, through the exchange of information and the cultivation of productive relationships. Joanne was nominated to represent Ireland in the ECSO – European Cyber Security Organization initiative ‘Women4Cyber’ which launched in Jan 19’. Joanne is also a board member of Cyber Ireland. She was named in SC magazine as one of the Top 50 Women in Cyber in Europe 2019. She has spent the last year working on introducing Cyber Security Education into the Irish school system with the 'Cyber Ireland Schools Academy.'

.Coming from a previous career as a University Research Academic and Professional Archaeologist, Eimear made the jump to Cybersecurity about 10 years ago; since then, she’s held Senior Management roles across Information Security, Privacy and Data Governance, and is currently focused on Identity and Access Governance. A self-confessed life-long learner, she also has special interests in Strategy/Policy Development, Organisational Culture/Change, as well as Creativity and Innovation Management. An original ‘Derry Girl’, Eimear is now based in Dublin.

Louise O Hagan is the Education Officer in CyberSafe Ireland, which is a not-for-profit organisation, established in 2015, that works to educate children, parents and teachers to navigate the online world in a safe way  -She has a masters in Cyberpsychology and is in write up phase of a PhD in the human element of cybersecurity ( her research is specifically on how human are exploited for data online in illegal contexts phishing emails, social media brand pages and legal contexts clickwrap terms and conditions and browsewrap cookies ). also part-time education and awareness officer in UK company creating e-learning material for their employees.

For more details on how to identify phishing emails, please click here.

Valerie Lyons is a highly experienced and respected information security professional. An accomplished Information Security Risk Manager with extensive experience at senior level in the financial services sector, Valerie has a successful track record in delivering business-driven information security solutions. She has a strong focus on team development and leadership, with excellent collaborative and interpersonal skills. Prior to joining BH Consulting, Valerie was a Research Assistant in DCU’s Irish Centre for Cloud Computing and Commerce, a lecturer in IT Security at Marino College of Further Education and was an IT security risk management consultant. Previous to those roles, she spent 14 years as Head of Information Security Risk in KBC Bank. Valerie is also currently undertaking a PhD, where her research explores differing organizational privacy protection approaches.

Lydia Behan joined CRH, one of the world's leading building materials companies, in 2018. She joined the organization after moving back to Dublin from Toronto, Canada where she was a member of the Fraud and Financial Crimes Management Group at TD, the largest bank in Canada. At TD, Lydia was responsible for the management and development of the Threat Intelligence and Cyber-Enabled Fraud practice. Prior to TD Bank, she has several years of experience at PwC Canada in both Forensic Technology Services and Cybersecurity consulting, working alongside both Canadian and international clients across a wide range of industries.

At CRH, Lydia heads up the Governance, Risk & Best Practice function within Group Information Security and focuses on helping business units and operating companies achieve their security objectives and manage risk.