This week’s featured guest in our Women in Cybersecurity video series is Caroline Wong. Caroline is a book author who is active in the security community, sharing her experiences and learnings from her cybersecurity leadership roles at companies such as eBay and Zynga. She is the Chief Strategy Officer at Cobalt, a company that gives clients access to pen testers through their Pen Testing as a Service (PtaaS) platform. In her interview with ESG Sr. Analyst Melinda Marks, Caroline shares her experiences in her career in cybersecurity, as well as her advice around team culture and diversity in the workplace.
Throughout her career journey, which started with an internship in IT project management for the security engineering team at eBay, Caroline explored roles across different business functions, such as engineering, product management, and management consulting, giving her a broad perspective. In her current role as Chief Strategy Officer at Cobalt, she oversees the security, IT, HR, and talent acquisition teams and plans for the future of the company.
Caroline approaches work with a “get things done” mentality and an eagerness to work with people who she likes and respects and who like and respect her. “The thing about security is that it is a team effort…the only way to get actually good security is to involve a lot of people,” says Caroline. She believes that building diverse teams will bring us closer to solving the challenges we face today in security.
In this interview, Caroline also talks about overcoming toxic work environments, work-life and family balance, resilience, and trusting our future selves to overcome these challenges. She believes, “When folks are valued and accepted, they’re going to do better work. I think that’s a natural outcome.” She enjoys working in a team in which she can bring her whole self to the table and be valued for it.
Caroline shares her expertise with others through LinkedIn Learning courses, a feature on CBS, as well as her books: one on security metrics that she dedicated to her original mentor at eBay and one on PtaaS. She notes, “It’s a passion area for me to take concepts that historically have been explained in complicated ways and just try to make them accessible.”
You can find her resources here:
Please visit Enterprise Strategy Group’s Women in Cybersecurity page, where you can also find a link to the full audio interview with Caroline, view past episodes, and join us to hear more inspiring stories in future shows!
