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CyberWire Daily

Encore: Malek Ben Salem: Taking those challenges. [R&D] [Career Notes]

CyberWire Daily

N2K Networks, Inc.

Daily News, Tech News, News, Technology

4.61K Ratings

🗓️ 13 July 2024

⏱️ 5 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Americas Security R&D Lead for Accenture Malek Ben Salem shares how she pivoted from her love of math and background in electrical engineering to a career in cybersecurity R&D. Malek talks about her interest in astrophysics as a young girl, and how her affinity for math and taking on challenges lead her to a degree in electrical engineering. She grew her career using math for data mining and forecasting eventually pursuing a masters and PhD in computer science where she shifted her focus to cybersecurity. Malek now develops and applies new AI techniques to solve security problems at Accenture. We thank Malek for sharing her story with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

You're listening to the CyberWire Network, powered by N2K.

0:07.0

The IT world used to be simpler. You only had to secure and manage environments that you controlled.

0:20.0

Then came new technologies and new ways to work. Now employees, apps, and networks are everywhere.

0:27.0

This means poor visibility, security gaps, and added risk.

0:31.0

That's why Cloudflare created the first ever connectivity cloud.

0:35.6

Visit Cloud.com to protect your business everywhere you do business.

0:55.0

My name is my name is my name is my lack been Salem and I am the America's security R&D lead for Accenter. As a child,

0:57.0

as a child, I don't know, I was I guess fascinated by astrophysics. I was amazed by the

1:12.0

NASA discoveries, right, of new planets and, you know,

1:17.3

stars and learning about the black holes and so that was something I really wanted to pursue but I think the driver is my love for math.

1:27.0

After high school I went to an engineering school. I had basically the choice of selecting what type of engineering degree I wanted to do and I've gone for electrical engineering.

1:44.0

What I heard is that it was, you know, very challenging and difficult.

1:48.0

That was basically why I've chosen it.

1:52.0

Again, I think just solving something that is that other people

1:57.8

find challenging was just basically a motivator for me. I really wanted to take those challenges.

2:03.9

So right after I graduated,

2:11.8

I got an offer from IBM so worked for their server group at the time

2:16.7

also using math not related to electrical engineering though, but more using math for data mining and forecasting and segmentation of their customers, whether they were hardware customers or software,

2:33.6

DB2 customers.

2:35.3

And then I worked in their microelectronics division

2:38.2

where my electrical engineering background was helpful.

2:42.0

So we worked in the semiconductor fab,

...

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