Blog 4

As mentioned in Blog 2, after working 7 years in the financial industry for one of the banks with the highest Information Security standards, I accepted an offer in the Telecommunications sector. A whole different world.

Back then, the Telecommunications sector, as many other sectors, was not as regulated as the Financial sector was.  I was hired to be in charge of the security of a mobile money app. I joined a small team of very creative and passionate people, and soon after we were doing vulnerability assessments, identifying and fixing existing vulnerabilities. I soon was working with people across the world, as this app was in several of the countries the Telco operated in.  A couple of months later, I was moved to the global Information Security team, looking at the entire company. And about a year later I promoted to Head of the area.

I was able to implement several of the best practices I had learnt in my previous job. But just like it was in my first job, there was a lot of convincing to be done. It was understandable – I was asking to modify processes that had been done a certain way for decades, sometimes with no historical data of security incidents occurring, so I was again doing a lot of awareness around Information Security.  

This has been a ride… I have been in this job for ten years now and there is never a boring day. The Telco industry is a very rapid-changing industry.  There is always something new to learn, something to be adapted to a new service or a new technology.  Not to mention Information Security! Everyday there is something new, either from the bad guys (new attacks, malwares) or from the good guys (new ways to defend from the bad guys, new recommendations, new tools).  I say it again – I never have a boring day at work.

Nowadays, everyone talks about Information Security. Many companies need people with these skills to protect their networks and assets. I hope my story has encouraged you, the reader, to get into this amazing world of Information Security. Not just because there is a demand for Information Security professionals out there, but because in this fast-paced topic you will continuously learn (if you want to) and you will never get bored.