Organised by Eskenzi PR in media partnership with the IT Security Guru, the Most Inspiring Women in Cyber Awards aim to shed light on the remarkable women in our industry. The following is a feature on one of 2022’s Top 20 women selected by an esteemed panel of judges. Presented in a Q&A format, the nominee’s answers are written in their own words with minor edits made by the editor for readability and where relevant, supplemented with additional commentary by their nominator.
This year, the awards are sponsored by Beazley, BT, KPMG and KnowBe4.
Dr Kiri Addison, Senior Product Manager, Mimecast
What does your job role entail?
My job entails creating new security products and features in response to the changing threat landscape. I work closely with threat researchers, engineers and customer-facing teams to make sure we are staying on top of the latest techniques used by cybercriminals and keeping our customers safe.
How did you get into the cybersecurity industry?
After completing my PhD, I worked as a risk and fraud analyst at HMRC. Here I applied my data analysis and data science skills to detect high risk tax fraud. I then moved to another UK government department, DWP, where I was the data scientist leading the development of the in-house cyber attack detection capabilities. Many of the techniques used in fraud detection can also be applied more generally to cybersecurity, but I was also able to build up my cyber domain knowledge through training and working with subject matter experts.
