← CyberWire Daily![Lauren Van Wazer: You have to be your own North Star. [CISSP] [Career Notes] — CyberWire Daily cover](https://megaphone.imgix.net/podcasts/52fc5342-f876-11f0-b68f-53112cad19d9/image/910aaf148c5fdf3b9f89208a91f19df4.png?ixlib=rails-4.3.1&max-w=3000&max-h=3000&fit=crop&auto=format,compress)
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You're listening to the Cyberwire Network powered by N2K.
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When it comes to mobile application security, good enough is a risk. A recent Survey shows that 72% of organizations reported at least one mobile application security incident last year and 92% of responders reported threat levels have increased in the past two years. Guard Square delivers the highest level of security for your mobile apps without compromising performance, time to market or user experience. Discover how Guard Square provides industry leading security for your Android and iOS apps at www.guardsquare.com.
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Hello, my name is lauren van wesser and I am vice president, global public policy and regulatory affair for akamai technologies. So I wasn't someone who had a particular profession emblazoned on my forehead. From when I was young I enjoyed doing a lot of things, everything from language to mathematics outdoors. But I had a father who was a PhD engineer and who said to me, okay Lauren, you know, you like doing so many things, but you'll never pick up an engineering textbook for fun on a Saturday night. But you would pick up something in history or languages and so why don't you give that a shot? And so I went into engineering. I have a BSc in System Science Engineering. Very few women in my field. At the time there were 5% women in my major, believe it or not. That was not yesterday and There are only 9% women in my major today. I think having had an engineering background has made all the difference in the world in my career because I think engineering gives one an analytic, rigorous approach to problem solving, which I ultimately became a lawyer later on. And it's sort of two disciplines that have a different way of looking at problems analytically. And I think the engineering background was a great grounding. It also has given me a fluency in technology which has been critical in all of the work that I've done. I work in an area where law, technology and policy overlap and so having that technical background gave me a fluency that has been very valuable. So I was a network engineer for AT&T in Northern Virginia doing network planning for Pennsylvania and Virginia, and then decided to go to law school at night. Got AT&T to pay for law school, which was my first successful bid at Advocacy. Then I clerked for a federal judge and went into private practice. But I think what was interesting was even though I was an environmental lawyer, it was always in areas that were deeply, heavily technology based. So I mean, leave it to the engineering degree. Within 10 years of reentering the workplace, having been a stay at home mom, I was doing cybersecurity policy at the White House. I was the lead for cybersecurity policy in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, dual hatted with the National Security Council. So every job in the White House is a temp job. And so, you know, really needed to think about what I was going to do next and had the very fortunate opportunity to start the public policy function at Akamai Technologies. And it's been marvelous. In two weeks it'll be nine years that I've been at Akamai and I've started and grew the function to worldwide function. I've got purview in over 140 different countries around the world. So I'm tracking cyber everywhere. It's not a job for someone who likes sameness. It involves interpreting, monitoring, legislation and regulation around the world. So for a company like Akamai, it's cybersecurity, Internet regulation, things like net neutrality. It's advising the company on positions to take. So briefing my senior executives, briefing our board and basically I'm the one stop interface with all things in terms of the government. So I don't have government sales as part of my function, but any other interaction our company has with the government is something that I'm a part of. I'm definitely like a coach leader and collaborative. We necessarily have to be collaborative. I've got a small team and we're interfacing with very senior leaders around the company and around the world. And I view my empowering of the people who work for me as the most important part of managing them. And so my view is I've got their back. If they make a mistake, it's my mistake and if they do well, they've done well. I hope to have made an impact in the policy area that make the world a little bit of a better place. The the Girl Scout motto, wanting to leave a campsite a little better than when you found it. So I've had a career working to promote getting broadband. I worked at the FCC for a long time. Getting broadband to places that didn't have it before or improving cybersecurity. I've had a key role in facilitating WI fi technology. Just having been able to have seat in the front row at some of the major technological transformations we've had in the past 20 plus years and have had a little role in helping to make them happen. Just do it. Don't listen to any naysayer. You have to be your own North Star. I mean nobody would have said, oh geez, you're a stay at home, Mom. Oh, you know, within a decade you'd be at the White House, right? Just don't listen to anybody. It's your career ladder. You make it what you want and it's natural for it to have twists and turns. So don't get discouraged. Take the risks and do things that you think will be really cool. And be an engineer. Do something technical. It's just been an extraordinary journey for me.
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If you only attend one cybersecurity conference this year, make it RSAC 2026. It's happening March 23rd through the 26th in San Francisco, bringing together the global security community for four days of expert insights, hands on learning and real innovation. I'll say this plainly, I never miss this conference. The ideas and conversations stay with me all year. Join thousands of practitioners and leaders tackling today's toughest challenges and shaping what comes next. Register today@rsaconference.com cyberwire26 I'll see you in San Francisco. Security works best in layers, and when those layers actually work together, that's when things get interesting. NORD layer is a network security platform designed for modern teams. It secures connections, controls access and helps stop threats, all without hardware or long deployment cycles. Now Nordlayer has partnered with CrowdStrike to bring Falcon endpoint protection into the mix, giving small and mid sized businesses a multilayered security approach that's practical to deploy and easy to manage. Nordlayer handles secure access and zero trust networking. CrowdStrike Falcon adds endpoint visibility and protection. Together they cover more ground than either could alone without requiring a large IT staff. For business leaders, that means clearer control and easier compliance. For IT teams, IT means granular access policies, faster onboarding and protection that scales. If you're looking for enterprise grade security without enterprise grade complexity, take a look at Nordlayer. Get up to 22% off yearly plans plus an additional 10% with code CYBERWIRE10. There's even a 14 day money back guarantee. Check out nordlayer.com cyberwire daily to learn more. Attackers don't go through your tools, they go around them. In our interview with Jared Atkinson, CTO at Spectrops, he reveals how attackers look to exploit our identities, steal tokens, and quietly snowball their access across active directory, cloud apps and GitHub. We talk through attack paths, why least privilege keeps failing, and how one misconfiguration can hand over the keys to your organization. Want to see risk as attackers do? Then check out the full interview now on TheCyberWire.com SpectreOps.