Editor’s note: Kyla Guru, a Stanford University student and CEO of Bits ’N Bytes Cybersecurity Education, was recognized this year as an ISACA Global Achievement Award winner as recipient of the Inspirational Leadership Award. She recently visited with ISACA Now to discuss her passion for cybersecurity and why she considers the field to be a great fit for young professionals (see Q&A below). To view the related video interview, visit https://www.isaca.org/membership/recent-graduate-membership. And to learn more about the 2021 ISACA Awards recipients and how to nominate an outstanding colleague, visit https://www.isaca.org/why-isaca/participate-and-volunteer/isaca-awards.
What makes cybersecurity fun to you?
KG: Cybersecurity is really fun. I think in terms of the fun that I’ve had, it’s definitely just in the people around me. The value is in being in rooms of people that are energetic about cybersecurity, that could talk about it for hours. Just being inside those rooms, you can kind of tell the passion that there is, even in a virtual space. … But also in engagements where you’re doing something that seems like you’re doing work that is from a movie, those are surreal experiences. When you start to do things like offensive security, you kind of feel like that hacker in a movie that is saving the world by typing lines of code. It’s very surreal to experience actually impacting the world through your fingers, through your lines of code, through your computer.
What makes cybersecurity a good fit for members of Gen Z?
KG: Cybersecurity is an amazing field to explore for a number of reasons. I think No. 1 is because it’s so high-impact; 75% of Generation Z wants a job that makes an impact in the future and they want mission-driven work, and I think anything you do in cybersecurity is oriented around keeping humans safe and keeping humans secure. It’s that fundamental core that I think should drive young people toward security in terms of, look, we’re really making an impact on other humans and we’re keeping our neighbors, our brothers and sisters, and everyone around us safe.
And the other part is that the possibilities are endless. When you take a career in cybersecurity, you never stop asking questions. The field is incredibly dynamic, so you’re learning every day and you’re growing as a leader and a thinker as well. It takes a lot of analytic thinking and critical thinking.
What can students do to set themselves up for success in cybersecurity?
KG: For students, I think the biggest thing is just surrounding yourself in circles of mentors and of professionals who have been working in this space and that really understand the core gaps and issues that there are. That also highlights the importance of diversity because it’s so critical that young people learn from diverse perspectives, from intergenerational perspectives, about what these gaps looked like 10 years ago, what they look like now, and what they’re going to look like in the future.
What are the learning components that rising professionals in cybersecurity should keep in mind?
KG: We’re really redefining what it looks like and what it means to be a professional today. I think the certification part of it just fits naturally into the puzzle piece of our future just because we are gaining all these sorts of experiences on all these different fronts. We might have picked up a nugget of knowledge about network security at a conference we went to or a webinar we joined online or a social media post that we saw, but what certification and education really allows you to do is to put those pieces together and really create something that you can take forward with you.
