The EWF is thrilled to kick off Data Privacy Week with an exclusive interview with Preeti Ravindra, Senior Data Scientist at VMware Carbon Black. Preeti is an EWF member and was a Podcast co-lead for EWF’s Rising Leaders Forum. The Rising Leaders Forum (RLF) is a program the EWF specifically created to help Millennial and Gen Z women advance and thrive in their careers. If you are a Millennial or Gen Z woman and are interested in learning more about the Rising Leaders Forum, please email rlfactionteams@ewf-usa.com. Preeti has some incredibly insightful privacy tips to share with our readers. Please welcome her!
How did you learn about the EWF? When did you become a member?
I learned about EWF while I was pursuing my Master’s degree at Carnegie Mellon University’s Information Networking Institute (INI). After hustling in grad school and during my first year at work as a security researcher, I applied to speak at the EWF National Conference on ransomware attacks. I came to the conference as a speaker and had the opportunity of meeting some amazing women in the industry who were very welcoming. I decided to join the EWF right away.
“Every time I attend an RLF workshop during the conference, I take away some ingenious ideas that my fellow RLF folks have used to get themselves unstuck or navigate a tricky situation.“
In addition to being a valued member of the EWF sisterhood, you have been a co-lead for our Rising Leaders Forum (RLF). What are some of the ways RLF has shaped you in your career?
Every time I attend an RLF workshop during the conference, I take away some ingenious ideas that my fellow RLF folks have used to get themselves unstuck or navigate a tricky situation. Being a co-lead of the podcast action helped me tap into a great network of current and future leaders of cybersecurity. Not only have I had opportunities to make new connections and grow my network, but I have also maintained and nurtured my existing network by having them over as guests and hosts on the podcast to talk about their areas of expertise. Producing content for the podcast and our desire for reaching out to a wide demographic of listeners helped me explore and learn different topics in information security, privacy, and risk which has broadened my horizons. I have also honed some of my risk management skills in ensuring that we maintain our podcast release cadence.
*Listen to the NextExec Podcast.
What are some tools you’ve used to integrate your career with your personal life?
My natural tendency is to be in “go” mode at work and at home and I’ve also learned that this cannot sustain. Getting things done gives me energy and I carve out time to get things done during hours that I am most productive. During work hours, I try to make the best use of meeting-free times for deep focus work so I can provide tangible outcomes during meetings. Having positive meetings will reduce the number of meetings which gives me time and energy to get more things done or venture into newer projects. It’s kind of a loop that keeps itself going. At a macro level, I decide and communicate with my family as to whether certain time periods are going to be more career objectives focused or family objectives focused.
What would you say are some of the main obstacles millennial and get z women face in the cyber/tech industry?
I think there are 2 broad buckets of Millennial and Gen Z folks – one group knows exactly what they want to do and they seek to make a quick impact and achieve their purpose. The other group wants to explore and try out different things to find that sweet fit. Finding appropriate growth paths becomes has been an obstacle for Millennial or Gen Z women in either group. Another common obstacle that I see is being discouraged to apply for jobs due to poor job descriptions.
“Problems and solutions identified in the RLF can definitely be channeled through EWF to bring about change in a lot of organizations that can pave the way for clearing these obstacles.”
Considering the above questions regarding obstacles, how do you think programs like EWF’s RLF can help solve those problems?
I think RLF has already conducted studies and recognized that millennials would like to see rotational programs and work that ties to their purpose in their employers. Problems and solutions identified in the RLF can definitely be channeled through EWF to bring about change in a lot of organizations that can pave the way for clearing these obstacles.
What do you think is the greatest lesson you learned from being part of the Rising Leaders Forum?
The greatest lesson that I learned is that whatever you dream of, it can be done with the right support system.
What advice would you give to someone considering joining EWF’s Rising Leaders Forum?
I would definitely recommend participating in the different action committees that RLF offers and taking on leadership roles. The RLF team and Linda are extremely supportive of your ideas and persevere to see you succeed.
Did you have a mentor or sponsor who supported you early on in your career? If so, what did you find most helpful?
I have had great mentors whose actionable advice has helped me get a good start in my career. I have mentors within the organization that I worked for who helped me navigate the culture and the work. Your manager is the best mentor if you’re just getting started. I have also participated in the EWF Lift program as a mentor and a mentee. I have had great connections with 2 Lift mentors. One mentor equipped me to build credibility and rise through the ranks. Another mentor supported and guided me through my career move process.
As a data scientist, what do you feel was the biggest challenge for organizations from a data and data privacy perspective in 2021? How can organizations tackle some of these challenges in the future?
In putting my security hat on, data proliferation and not tracking and classifying the data appropriately will most likely lead to similar problems we see in asset/inventory tracking in IT. If we don’t know what data we have, where it is stored and how it is used, it is hard to model threats and place appropriate security controls. To tackle these problems, the industry is already making headway in the right direction. There is a lot of investment in DataOps and tools to govern the lifecycle of data from creation, processing, use in AI/ML and storage. Cloud service providers are also making confidential computing more mainstream where data in use is encrypted when being worked on by cloud workloads. The protection of data in use can provide assurance to individual users and organizations.
In a similar vein, most data scientists are experts in statistics and modeling and it’s a big ask to pile on these teams to review the system design and security of the models as well. Before models are operational, the entire system needs to be examined from a systems design viewpoint as well as a security point of view. Both AI and security researchers are finding new ways to break ML models by providing adversarial inputs and also trying to see if the privacy of the data used in training models can be breached before our adversaries can employ these means. While data scientists create the business value, AI red teamers and software developers help protect these systems from being abused and ensure the data is used as intended and protected. This still seems to be in nascent stages in most organizations and perhaps something I wish more organizations adopt in tandem with building out their AI/ML programs.
We know young people spend more and more time on various social media platforms. Do you have specific tips to keep kids and young adults safe online?
It’s often said that you can’t take back things you’ve said or done on social media. When in doubt, discard your posts. Resist the urge to click on links that may lead you to the unsafe parts of the internet.
Be mindful of sharing content of and/or about other people. Think about how your sharing may have implications for other people who are part of your content. For example, if you are posting a story on Instagram with you and a bunch of friends hanging out, do you have permission to tag your friends? Maybe they don’t want to post on social media and have their activity recorded.
Most social media platforms let you tune privacy settings, make good use of those privacy settings to control what can be shared, viewed, and notified. For example, I disable people who are not connected to me from viewing who I am connected to. I also ensure that only people I’ve connected with can view my pictures and I am quite vigilant in accepting connection requests from people whom I know.
Consider creating different groups if possible, one for family, friends, and acquaintances. This can help segment content that you’d like to share.