Enjoy this special encore episode:
Computational Social Scientist Andrea Little Limbago shares her journey as a social scientist in cybersecurity. Andrea laments that she wishes she'd known there is no straight line between what you think you want to do and then where you end up going. Beginning her career in international relations and courted by the Department of Defense's Joint Warfare Analysis Center while teaching at New York University, Andrea began her work in cybersecurity. Her team was one of the first to start thinking about the intersection of cybersecurity and geopolitics and quantitative modeling. Andrea reminds us there are many paths and skills needed in cybersecurity and hopes she's opened some doors for others. We thank Andrea for sharing her story with us.
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(music) You're listening to the Cyberwire Network, powered by N2K. (music) (music) Identity architects and engineers simplify your identity management with Strata. Securely integrate non-standard apps with any IDP, apply modern MFA, and ensure seamless failover during outages. Strata helps you avoid app refactoring and reduces legacy tech debt, making your identity systems more robust and efficient. Strata does it better and at a better price. Experience stress-free identity management and join industry leaders in transforming their identity architecture with Strata. Visit strata.io/cyberwire, share your identity challenge, and get a free set of AirPods Pro. Revolutionize your identity infrastructure now. Visit strata.io/cyberwire and our thanks to Strata for being a longtime friend and supporter of this podcast. (music) (music) My name is Andrea Little-Limbago. I am a computational social scientist. (music) What I wish I had known is that there is no straight line between what you think you want to do and then where you end up going. Mine was very circuitous, and so, you know, I started off, you know, an undergrad, was a romance language in government major, so I really, again, getting back to my love of international relations. You know, I started there and then when you took about a year off, worked in Breckenridge, Colorado as a waitress, and you prepared for grad school. (music) And then in grad school, it was a political science new focus on international relations and methodology as my core components and by methodology that basically means modeling. In a quantitative way, how do you model everything from your regime-type democracies to authoritarian regimes to what, you know, the relationship between your military personnel and foreign direct investment? (music) After grad school and I got my degree, I taught briefly at New York University and then the Department of Defense reached out to me at a conference and I chatted with them and I ended up going to work at the Joint Warfare Analysis Center, which is in Dahlgren, Virginia, and ended up leading a team there of computational social scientists working on a broad range of factors, a lot of it was counter-terrorism, but that's actually where I started getting into more of the cybersecurity angle. But we were one of the first, you know, teams really started thinking about the intersection of cybersecurity and geopolitics and quantitative modeling. (music) An important thing that it taught me working there was, you know, in academia you have not an endless amount of time, but you have a lot of time to thoroughly do your research, to double-check your data, to do everything. You go work in the Department of Defense and it's everything from, you know, we need an answer in the next hour to, you know, we need a couple of days to a couple of weeks and so the time horizon is really very, and it initially is very, very uncomfortable to provide some sort of answer within an hour because you haven't been able to check all the data. There are always going to be all these assumptions, but you have to learn how to take what you know, provide the assumptions that are there and still give, you know, your best input that you can. And being able to turn that quickly and make sure that also it's relevant to a higher audience as well to more of an executive level audience, you know, it's actually a really tough skill. Being able to do research that is operationally relevant is, you know, extremely rewarding. (music) I work on the geopolitics of cybersecurity, so I look at how technologies and security interact with what's going on, you know, in global events. What I love is doing research and helping support areas that I believe, you know, fundamentally are linked to our own national security and national security is linked to the preservation of democracy. That to me is just amazing, and it's, you know, it's areas that I love, and it's in an area that I think is one of the most important missions of our time right now. And with democracy on the decline around the globe, there's, you know, we need more and more people looking at ways to help preserve democracy within this digital era that we find ourselves in now, because there isn't a playbook for it. That's sort of one of my broader goals is, you know, to help inspire and encourage other folks that with a similar kind of background to come into this area because we need more people that look at the intersection of humans and technology, and so that's where I like to focus, and that's where I, you know, like to encourage others to come in as well. (music) When I first really was in cyber security, I think the biggest challenge I had was, as you were getting asked, almost on a weekly basis, you know, what is a social scientist doing in cyber security? And when you keep getting asked that time and time again, you kind of start wondering like, "What am I doing here?" You know, they weren't doing it in a malicious way. They were like, "Well, that seems weird." And so you do have to kind of question what you are doing in that industry, and I think we do struggle a bit as an industry to, you know, open the doors to more people from different disciplines, and so, you know, justifying my existence within the industry I think was something that it took me a while to overcome, and I would say I still ponder it from time to time, but I'm at least much more confident in my responses on that, and the great thing is, I actually, over the last year or two, that question has stopped being posed, and I think it's because we're finally at a point where we're starting to see that there are humans behind all the technology, and given that, you need social scientists, so the challenge of knowing how you fit in was something that I struggled with quite a bit. When people think of cyber security, they still think of the hooded hacker, and while that's an important part of it, that's not the only job track that you can take. There's just so many different areas within cyber security, and we have a huge gap right now as far as having the skill sets and people in the workplace openings that are out there, so, I would say, get involved and read. You know, hopefully that I helped, you know, open doors to both of you, the kind of research, the integration of more of the rigorous social sciences, and to think about cyber security, but opening the doors also just to broader, you know, disciplines and different people coming into the industry. Being part of that transition that makes cyber security much more accessible for everyone. Yeah, that'd be great if something along those lines happens, so let's see. [Music] [MUSIC PLAYING]
