This episode has been automatically transcribed by AI, please excuse any typos or grammatical errors.

Chris: Anastasia Edwards is an innovative thinker and cybersecurity professional with refreshing soft skills and empathy, emotional intelligence, awareness, communications, and cultural change implementation. Her sweet spot is melding cybersecurity awareness together with insider threat monitoring and detection. She is a forward thinking cybersecurity professional with dreams and aspirations of bringing cybersecurity awareness and best practices for a safer digital lifestyle to people all over the. A true entrepreneur that is trailblazing a path directly through the industry right now. And a stage at thanks for stopping by barcode.

Anastasia: Thank you so much for having me. It is an honor.

Chris: I appreciate you joining me. And I’m a big fan of yours as well. Not only because of the incredible insight that you provide, but you provided with flavor and that’s what I love. And it’s through a lens that extends way beyond our industry and it connects people on many, many different levels.

Chris: So first off, thank you.

Anastasia: Yes. Thank you for recognizing that that’s, that’s very special to me. Flavor is definitely what I hope to bring to, to, to the industry, for sure.

Chris: Yes. Yes. And we need it. Yeah, we need it. Yeah. Although I understand that you were recruited into cyber security versus seeking it out.

Chris: Is that true?

Anastasia: It was a blessing. It was, yes. I was just hanging out on the it side as a. Technical engineer for fiber optics and somebody who I worked with on that side of the house ended up taking over the, the, the brand new cybersecurity program. And he just, he knew my work ethic and I feel, you know, feel like he liked me, you know?

Anastasia: So he was like, Hey I would like somebody like you on this team. And I, and he is like, you know, have you ever thought of cybersecurity? And I was like, is that like the FBI? You know, like I had no idea. You know what it meant, but it sounded awesome. And I used to always say I wanted to do some sort of career like that.

Anastasia: Like I like analyzing things, but I didn’t really understand what that meant when it came to cybersecurity. Even when I was asked to join the team, it just all became clear after a while, you know? And I was like, oh, this I’m meant to do. And just things started clicking and yeah, I’m here for a reason for sure.

Anastasia: Is to bring flavor to the industry.

Chris: yeah. So that’s super interesting. What was your perception of cybersecurity before you got

Anastasia: in? I came in real low, like low level, like gotcha. No, I mean, I, I knew, you know, I knew technical aspects because I, you know, would help people on that side of the house. So I knew like a little bit of networking and stuff like that.

Anastasia: I never, at that point had ever even thought about cyber security. At all so, yeah, yeah. At that point I’m saying like back then, so, you know, I was just oblivious, like this sounds awesome. Like so,

Chris: yeah. And then you got in and you’re like, all right, this is it. No

Anastasia: oh, it wasn’t. No, I got in and I was like, what am I doing here?

Anastasia: this is why I like my story because I know that there’s other people out there right now that are. I mean itching to get in the door, you know, and I didn’t even know what was presented to me, this awesome situation at the time, but now I’m looking back and I’m seeing, you know, all these people that have gone to school that, you know, they really have put in intention to be here and they’re having such a hard time getting in.

Anastasia: So. This will lead into maybe a later part of this conversation where I’ve created the Friday 15 cyber chats to give more people a chance to just present their personality, to have a chance 15 minutes, you know, like to have a chance to present personality, because if some, most of the time, and we know this in cyber security, it’s not what’s on that piece of paper.

Anastasia: The resume’s great. And it’s good for paperwork and, and whatnot, but your cybersecurity is about a. And if you don’t have the proper puzzle pieces to fit in a team in on your team, then you’re just gonna have a mess. So you wanna get the right personalities, working together with the right skills to fill each specific need within your, within your organization.

Anastasia: And I’m saying, I C you I’m, I’m an example of those people. You can do it. You can get in there. You just have to keep trying, don’t give up, don’t give up and go back to the other thing you used to. Keep trying and make connections and network and present yourself and your strengths. What can you do in this industry and make ’em want you,

Chris: yeah.

Chris: Yeah. And, and I think your background in it, I guess sort of helped you easily transition. Right?

Anastasia: I didn’t even have technology background. I came from customer service. My ultimate underlying skill in life is people I’m an empath. So I know how to treat people. So that they feel well serviced. You know what I’m saying?

Anastasia: So, yeah. Yeah. I started there.

Chris: I wanna talk to you about that. Yeah. The people aspect, cuz I know one topic that you hit on often that I read about in your post is your passion for the human factor side of cybersecurity, which is I think we all know is just super important. What was it about that side?

Chris: That captivated you, was it the customer service background coming in? Have you always been sort of just mm-hmm analyzing people. Like what, what was your passion there? Yeah.

Anastasia: So this is so cool to me. . So, as I’m sitting there in my new role of cyber security all of these respectable awesome people, shout out to you guys, miss you guys.

Anastasia: I make very, I make like lifelong friends with the people that I work with. So I, I just, I have nothing bad to say with anybody I’ve ever worked with in the past. So it’s awesome. This is this it’s like you build family another plus to working in cybersecurity. So anyway, I’m sitting there in my new.

Anastasia: And I’m like, okay, I can be taught this. This is why he brought me over because he’s seen that I learned on the job, cuz I went from just customer service to now I’m doing technical administrator stuff. You know, I’m learning on the job. People are that she can learn. She’s teachable. She doesn’t come with an attitude.

Anastasia: She’s you know, we can, we can teach her. So that’s how I got up there. So now I’m in this job and I’m. Oh, my God, all these guys know what they’re talking about. And I have to ask questions every two seconds. I feel terrible about that, but Hey, I gotta do what I gotta do. And they always made it understandable for me.

Anastasia: So I’m like, where do I shine though? Where do I feel comfortable? It was when I would interact with the customers because when you’re doing cybersecurity and you have an issue on somebody’s endpoint, you know, it’s the human who you’re reaching out to saying, Hey so I noticed this activity, you know, what’s going.

Anastasia: But how do you approach them so that they’re not feeling like, oh God, the it department is down my back again, you know? Yeah. which, which, when I would get that from them, I would get annoyed cuz I’m human too. Like I, you know, I, so I’m like, listen. I’m here to help you. I understand that you may not understand that you may not understand some of the words that we use over here, but I’m here to help translate that for you, you know, and I would break it down to, to where they would feel relaxed.

Anastasia: And then I would disarm that feeling that they would, you know, if they’re feeling attacked, you know, so, and nothing ever turned out to be just horrible. You know, it was just something that we could, we could just teach them to do.

Chris: Yeah, it’s breaking through that stereotype. That’s the perception.

Anastasia: Oh my goodness.

Anastasia: Yeah, it still is. It still is that way. And you know, whatever it’ll change eventually, I think, but critical mass critical mass adoption of Cyber consciousness, elevation. that’s how I see it. That’s how I see it. Well, I was, I was listening to your other podcast last night of Pablo Holman. Yes, he is amazing.

Anastasia: I was just like, ah, he is. Yes, he is so cool. And the way he thinks is exactly how I think like, so super futuristic, like I’m looking at us now in 2022. and I had just posted this somewhere on LinkedIn to that, like, it’s gonna look like a tar , you know, in retrospect and not, and not too long. Yeah. So it’s so fast moving and humans like yes, AI and machine learning and computers and automation.

Anastasia: Amazing. Great. But what about the humans? What I’m not trying to get like into politics or anything like that, but just in general. How many people are gonna be able to work. And if they, if they can’t work, what are they gonna do? And what’s gonna happen next? You know? So my, so I just leave it at that and I’m thinking, okay, well we have a problem and I wanna try to help fix that problem.

Anastasia: So let me try to get as many humans to be cyber conscious as possible. Another way I like to see it is getting every single human being. This is gonna probably take a little while, but if we launched massive campaigns across the world, like the more, you know, remember the more, you know yes. Whatever that.

Anastasia: Okay. So why don’t we do that with cybersecurity? Because it’s so necessary. Yes, it is. It’s like, even from the moment you’re born, you are under threat of having your identity. The moment you become a human in this realm, you? So, so back backing up. If the entire earth became entry level cybersecurity, entry level cybersecurity, conscious, we would be at a very good start.

Anastasia: So we’re switching the way in that organic humans. Think they’re not, not thinking about cybersecurity. They are absolutely think. In like innately with, you know, like we think when we leave the door, when we leave the house and we lock our doors and we leave our car and we lock our doors, we don’t think twice about it.

Anastasia: That critical mass though, we have to get what, 10 to 20% of the people to think that way before it just boom. All of a sudden, everybody thinks that way. And what is thinking that way? Adopting cyber core values. What are cyber core values? Well, we could. 10 or five or whatever. All of the really good ones, you know good password, hygiene updates, always updates, do not click on anything unexpected or, or UN, you know, unfamiliar to you and on and on and on, those are our core values.

Anastasia: We adopt those and now we are good cyber stewards

Chris: and we will get to that point?

Anastasia: Yes. We will.

Chris: What’s the key to getting there?

Anastasia: It’s at scale we’re scaling. So if you have, if you do it for your organization and you’ve got five people who work for you, it’s gonna be a lot easier. If you have one person out of the, out of the five people whose job it is to be your cyber security evangelist or your cyber security cheerleader, or your cyber security mascot, whatever it takes for that person to be like the mama bear, whatever that, that helps you.

Anastasia: Go from an infantile cyber consciousness to a, at least a, you know, a, a teenager or something. , you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Yeah. There has to be a lifeline that everybody knows they can go to and feel comfortable and yeah. And open. And so that’s where my other idea of the cyber human resources comes in.

Anastasia: Okay. You pop that in between your humans. And the cyber security operations and, or your internal threat operations teams. Mm-hmm you put empathy in there. You put the, you put the human translator right there in the middle and they handle all of that. Make the human feel good. Give the human information, give them feedback, give them praise.

Anastasia: Do all the things that you do to, to raise somebody up to think, to survive in this world. And then they take all of that information about the humans who they know and they care for, and they watch very carefully and they track, and then they feed that back to internal threat operations or you know, they also work with the security operations team for, you know, internal human whatever’s going on DLP or, you know, fishing, fishing is a big one.

Anastasia: Fishing is amazing. I get to wear both hats. Yeah. It’s, it’s kind of fun. it’s like, yeah, yeah, it is. And I think it’s a, I, that’s why I like the idea of allowing fishing to be a part of that middle section. Now cyber security operations can also have their fishing guy or, or group or whatever, but also allow the cyber human resources to have a fishing to do.

Anastasia: Because they’re translating like humans, they’ll be like, oh you know, Joe, Bob and Sally are highly targeted this week and their performance has been thus, you know, like. They’re recognizing that they’re being targeted and they’re avoiding attacks or, you know, Bob had to slip up and he fell for this one, but you now, your sock knows who is your, and your internal threat operations know who your highest risks are.

Anastasia: So now they can take that information and do whatever they need to do to, you know mitigate, remediate, and reduce and all of that stuff or respond if they need to. I present this idea out to the world. because I think so many people within cybersecurity even now already can benefit off of it. Why, how you can take this idea and you can contract yourself out and be that, be that team.

Anastasia: That’s what you do. You’re, you’re a cyber and what, and, and then even more so you can target your own customers. How, okay. Well, say you like healthcare, like healthcare is an industry that you’re really good at. So. Now you’re you build the cybersecurity awareness program or the cyber human resources program to be geared towards all healthcare type organizations instead of just being a oh, everything.

Anastasia: We do everything. No, you’re focused on healthcare. Okay. Mm-hmm so why is that beneficial? Well, now you have application of your security awareness training. People are bored with their training because it’s not applic. The, yeah, the teams who run those programs should be able to really cater to the application of the business.

Anastasia: So if you’re, if you are a, a military business, you want all of your resources, all of your communications, all of your whole vibe has to be military esque. And applies to military stories. You tell mil, military related stories when it comes to breaches. And if it’s a bank, you do the same thing. You focus on banks.

Anastasia: If it’s a sports organization, that’s that sounds fun to me, cuz now you can be like cheer. You can literally create like a cheer squad or something, you know? Yeah. I like that. Okay. I like that. You know you can just make it really applicable. You can tailor the training and. Person. And then one more step.

Anastasia: I believe that training should always be personably applicable, tell people about how to protect their children and their El and their elderly loved ones. Everybody tell them how to be their chief family security officer at home. Yeah. And then when they do that at home, they bring that to work. So now you just have an all around good cyber steward.

Chris: So, do you educate internally with the expectation that extends beyond the business or does it come down to, you know, resonating on a personal level? And I hate to say it, but you know, often it doesn’t resonate until you’re directly hit or impacted by a breach or your data’s compromised. So. What’s the hook that we can use to get into the mind of someone to impact their behavior and, you know, force a security minded culture.

Anastasia: Yeah. It, well, you now you have a super involved team. You have a, you have a team who’s literally there to make sure you’re involved now. We’re not, I mean, how, how like punitive, what’s the word? Like how, how tough you are, I guess like on, on your users? No, like what, what are your consequences? Like how, like, do you allow someone to get fished once and then fire them?

Anastasia: Or do you work with them? You know? So like that, that, what is, I don’t know what the word is for that yeah. It’s

Chris: How, like how aggressively are. Penalizing people.

Anastasia: Yeah. Yeah. Or are you yeah. Like exactly that all of those things matter significantly. So, and, and so then, like, I can’t, I feel like me personally, I can’t make that decision that has to come from the people who run the organization all the way up at the top.

Anastasia: They have to be very involved and they have to be the number one spokesperson, cuz if they’re not doing. You’re not gonna get as quick of an adoption. Yeah. To your goals, it has to come from the top down. So I would focus. I would literally have a team or, you know, somebody dedicated to the, the executive office and up even the board of directors.

Anastasia: Like a concierge, if you will. I mean, they’re right. I’m, I’m so serious. Yeah. Like, or a deputy or like a, you know, whatever they’re right there all the time ready for all of the cybersecurity, but they’re not just standing there waiting for something to happen. They’re teaching as well. You know, they’re like they’re watching things that that’s going, like they’re dedicated to those.

Anastasia: This is just my mind. So may I mean, no, I love it a fantasy. I don’t know, but this is what I think and how I think and what I believe. And this is why. And sometimes when I post on LinkedIn and I’m like, oh, check out my cool merch for my Friday 15. I’m like, they probably think I’m so crazy. but I believe in it, I think, I mean, it’s legit to me, the more people.

Anastasia: Who look at cyber security as a culture, as a lifestyle, as more than just I, cyber security is such a tough word, cuz it’s long, you know, , it’s like cyber security, but if we had like a really cool name to encompass, what cyber security is, it’s not just a job. It’s not just, oh, I I’m an analyst or I’m a pen tester or I’m a CISO or it’s not just that.

Anastasia: You want, you know, you want your kids to get into it. You, you just want people to be cyber conscious first and then to realize like how cool it is to work in this industry. It’s like, come on. Yeah. And then, and then when we all switch over to AI and ML and there’s barely any jobs for humans left, there still has to be humans behind the technology.

Anastasia: So you might as well consider coming over here.

Chris: exactly. Yeah. We will need you at some point. . Yeah. You know, I’m a big proponent of thinking outside of the box and I think we need to have people continue to think against the grain. But yeah, it comes down to the fact that organizations are still getting breached.

Chris: So we need to keep innovating solutions and innovating new frameworks. So definitely keep pushing that concept. Have you actually had an opportunity to develop this. And run a POC.

Anastasia: I am constantly thinking and working and doing on, on this and many other things, but this is obviously my number one right now.

Anastasia: This in the Friday 15 are my two top projects right now. However, It’s just me. just me. I have, I have one person who I’ve basically, I talk to people like I’m talking to you and I just let them know, Hey, this is me. This is how I think, you know, you, you are either think I’m a weirdo or you like really wanna get with this program because every, I feel like so many people could benefit from this, you know, but it’s literally just myself.

Anastasia: And I don’t know what to do. so, so I, I thought about it and I said, you know what? I’m just gonna, and I’ve been holding onto this cyber human resources. I didn’t have a name for it. Matter of fact, super quick backtracking to when I was sitting there in my first job in cybersecurity, I was like, how can I be the human?

Anastasia: You know, how can I make a human role within cybersecurity back then is how I was thinking. But I had no idea how to articulate it. It took me 10 years to now be where I’m at now with my mind and stuff and with this program.

Chris: So yeah, no, I like that framework. It’s that human link that you.

Anastasia: Yes, because you said people are still getting hacked, breached.

Anastasia: There’s still things that are happening. And of course you have entire teams within these organizations whose job it is to make sure that the technology is updated and patched. And, you know, you’re watching for all the latest info drops and all of that. Like there’s people there for that, but there is not the equal counter.

Anastasia: And the softer less data and cyber talky, like the human side, that side is missing. Yeah. And everything has two sides to it. Everything has, you know, polarities everything’s in polarity. So you it’s lopsided. And I feel like this is why we have the, I’ll say they’re growns and drones that you may see consistently within cybersecurity burnouts.

Anastasia: Just, you know, constant stressing out. Yeah. But stress, burnout, although all of those things are because we are out of equilibrium. Yeah.

Chris: And I agree with the completely. And like you said that there’s good and bad everything. So when, when a company does get breached, they immediately have the cross hairs on the.

Anastasia: Right. Yeah. In a negative way,

Chris: right. In a negative way.

Anastasia: Exactly. Yeah. Which I, which I understand when I put my mind on that team, cuz I can, I can do both sides. I can be. That’s why I also like insider insider threat and risk. You know, I really like that side as well, but my ultimate is for the human , so I feel bad for them, you know, it’s like we didn’t give you a chance.

Anastasia: Before we just came down on you like this, you know, and it may, it’s not fair and no, it’s not. And it may not be came down on you as it may sound coming out of my mouth for them, they could be so sensitive that you just look at them the wrong way and they feel worthless. You know, we’re talking about human beings here who have traumas, who have stories to tell who have past histories, they have triggers.

Anastasia: And we don’t think about those things, but we should. If we want to have a stronger defense period, that’s all, that’s as simple as it is for me. If you bring up your humans to match the, the intention and the investment and the, and the love that you’re putting into the technology do the same for your humans.

Anastasia: And now you have a happy family, a secure family

Chris: from your perspective, are humans within an organization. The weakest link or the strongest link?

Anastasia: I think both because if you don’t, I mean, even if you talk about technology, there’s still a human who’s responsible for running updates and doing, you know, something.

Anastasia: So even, even our technology humans, like we do have different subsets of humans when we’re talking about the cyber verse, right. Like, right. You have cyber layman with all due respect. That’s like, The easiest term I can come up with for now that we, when I say cyber layman to you, you know what I’m talking about?

Anastasia: Yeah. Right. But if I go to like my auntie and I’m like, Hey you, you know, you’re a cyber layman. She’s, she’ll be like, what, what, excuse me, excuse you. You know, like she doesn’t, but you know what I’m saying? So, so then, then we have your it folks, or you have your entry level, cyber security people. Now I would consider myself when I first came into this world from it.

Anastasia: I was entry level capable because I already understood some of like what networking was, but I definitely knew how a computer worked and I knew how email worked at the simplest mm-hmm right. So I, it was easy for me to pay attention. I grew up online, you know, I’ve been online forever, so I knew easily.

Chris: Were you always security conscious? No, even

Anastasia: then, no. Well, well, no. Yes, yes. I mean, I, I’m not I’m not easily fooled, you know, I’m a skeptic and I’m slightly paranoid. And you know, so I, I’m not just gonna, but you knew the

Chris: triggers from being in

Anastasia: it. Yeah, for sure. But like, you know, things like updates at one point, this is before it.

Anastasia: like if my phone or something needed an update, I would be like, oh, annoying. I’ll do that later. right. You know, like, but now it’s like, oh, Nope, it’s easy. It’s quick. Just do it. Just do it. I have a shirt on my . I have a shirt on my website that says be calm and run the update or something like that.

Anastasia: I can’t remember optic go look, but. Yeah, stay calm and run the update cuz you know, people see the update and they’re like, oh I got, oh, I don’t wanna do it. I got things to do. Or I’m in the middle of this or whatever the excuse is, whatever people don’t wanna do it. Just do it, just do it. Also, I’m a night owl. I am trying to make connections with people who, who are up at all hours of the night, thinking about how to make cybersecurity, a better place.

Anastasia: Because I’m up by myself and I’m just sitting here like, oh, I wish my friend, I try friends. All my friends do completely other things than me. and I love them to death. And I’m like, cybersecurity, you do cybersecurity. They probably can’t stand me. They are probably . I try so hard. But no, they’re, they’re awesome, but it’s just funny how I don’t have anybody to talk to I just mean like late, late, you know, like later and not just during business hours, like yeah.

Anastasia: You know what I’m saying? So I got you, but, and I’m all the way out here in Montana, so it’s not like I can just go to the cyber bar down the street and. Yeah.

Chris: Yeah. We could do a 24 7 bar. So like you have the nocturnal security professionals

Anastasia: there. I was one of those guys. I was the nocturnal, I loved night shift, shout out night shift.

Anastasia: I loved night shift, man. It was so awesome because you’re still there. You’re doing your job, but it’s just chill and I’m an introvert. And I like star. I like to work in the dark, you know, so it was just perfect for me. It was. People forget about you. They do. They , you’re just there to hold it down while everybody’s sleeping.

Anastasia: So, yeah. Right. Yeah.

Chris: So I wanna talk to you about a project that you’re driving cold the Friday 15 cyber chats, cyber speed, networking project. Talk to me about that. What’s that all about?

Anastasia: So this is one of my projects that I decided. Put out there after sitting on it for a while and it, it comes about just like I was explaining earlier, just looking at, I stay on LinkedIn a lot because I feel like it is a, a, a really good, you know, wormhole into the space that is cybersecurity.

Anastasia: Like there’s all kinds of people on there. They’re all talking, you know, it’s, it’s a culture. It’s there. I’m on there and I’m watching and I’m looking and I’m analyzing every, everything that’s going on. And I’m seeing how these folks who are trying to get into cybersecurity are having such a hard time.

Anastasia: And then to see people who have been in it, you know, get laid off or just anything happens, you know, like then there’s just, I mean, there’s so many aspects to where I’m seeing a need for people to communicate more personably mm-hmm and. The bar idea had come to mind. Just as in the essence, like the essence of a bar.

Anastasia: And then I was like, I had watched something that was like, something about speed dating or something. And I was like, oh my gosh, what if I did a virtual cyber speed dating like thing for professionals in the cybersecurity industry, but who want to have a chance to meet somebody else in the industry like this in a vibe like.

Anastasia: Super chill, no expectations, but still, but still professional because we’re all, you know, we’re all in the same lifestyle. We all do this, you know, so I was like, okay, so and I , again, just me, just me. And I was like, how can I do this? I’ve got people, I threw it out there. And people were like, yeah, I like it.

Anastasia: And I was like, oh, this is, this is gonna work. So this is awesome. They like it. So I tried to do it through some other excuse me, some other platform, a video platform. And it did not work the way that I thought it would work. And I did a mistake. And there was about 20 people who were involved, who saw me fail twice.

Anastasia: And I was so embarrassed. I mean, literally I’m in the middle of my daughter’s wrestling me at state. She made state wrestling and I’m sitting there and I’m watching her wrestling and I don’t have service on my phone. oh, and she’s on the mat. And it’s the time of the Friday 15, which I do at 3:00 PM Eastern time, Friday.

Anastasia: Okay. And. I could not, I was not, I was dead in the water. I couldn’t do anything. Was this your first attempt? That was the second attempt. The first attempt I forgot to click a small button on like the options like. One damn button. That one damn button. Yeah. I, it was, it was like fail. Oh man. Failed twice.

Anastasia: Duh. So there’s another story there because you know, failure, people always, you know, get discouraged when they fail. And my old self, I definitely would’ve been like, okay, I’m getting off LinkedIn. never, never gonna show my face. I am gone. Like, just, I’ll have just put me back on night.

Chris: How do you sharpen the acts? Like how, how do you, like, where do you go to get your information and, and learn? Like, do you have trusted resources or trusted people on LinkedIn that you, that you follow? Like how do you filter out the noise?

Anastasia: So I that, so on one, on one perspective, when I think about wanting to take in all of the information that comes out in the cyber world on a daily basis, it annoys me because I just wish I had like a USB stick.

Anastasia: I could plug into the internet, download, and stick it back in my brain. So it would all be there because I want to know all the things, but it’s so much. And so I can’t keep up. So I, I overload and then I just don’t even wanna look at it at. Okay. So that’s where I’m at. I let things fall in front of me as they may.

Anastasia: I’m very like sync, like synchronicities. You may have seen on my LinkedIn that I put on there a meme that said when your coworkers know you work with TA cards and crystal balls and it was a, like a dude in a wizard costume at his computer, just looking at him like what I’m like one of those kind of people I’m really like metaphysical if you will.

Anastasia: So anyway, so I, I like synchronicities and stuff and I just, because I, I also like low. So I don’t like to force anything. I just go with what the universe gives to me, but it also goes in line with, you know, whatever has happened in the past. So it’s just like an unfolding carpet, really. Yeah. And things jump out at me.

Anastasia: But what I do is when I stop with cybersecurity, I do give myself non cybersecurity thinking time. And I call it like junk time. I mean, I literally go from cybersecurity, you know, engineering. Ideas and whatever that I have going on to like watching basketball wives or something like that, you know what I’m saying?

Anastasia: Mm-hmm I just, I go to like some, something totally mindless gotta reset. Yeah. But not for very long. I mean, really, it’ll be like an episode in the background while I’m, you know, doing something with my hands. So my brain will like to reset and then I’ll go to something educational, but not cybersecurity related.

Anastasia: Or it could even be like Bigfoot, Sasquatch videos. I love those things. I just found a, I just found a Sasquatch in the back of my Renegade a little, well, my daughter found it. She was like, Hey mom I don’t know that, like in the back window, there is a Bigfoot walking up a mountain and it’s really tiny.

Anastasia: And I was like, what? , that’s what I said. . So I turned and I looked and it was just this itty bitty, teeny tiny little Sasquatch guy walking up a mountain, like, and it blended into the black dotted, whatever that is on, that goes around your window. And I was so excited. I. Have a picture of it. I should send it to you.

Chris: so that’s only on the

Anastasia: renegades though. I don’t know. I don’t know. What’s on the renegades when I got my Renegade my, my best friend is a Jeeper and she was like, oh, you know, there’s Easter eggs on these things. And I’m like, what is it? Yes. What isn’t Easter eggs. So she goes, and she starts inspecting like all angles of my vehicle and she’s pointing out things.

Anastasia: And then I, I was like, yeah, I don’t know. I saw some of them, but they looked obvious to me. I was like, those aren’t Easter eggs like this. Yeah. I’m like, whatever these guys are crazy. And then all of a sudden, like just yesterday, my daughter was chilling in the way, way back of the car and she just saw the SAS watch.

Anastasia: And she was like, mom there’s oh my God. Now, every time I look in my rear view mirror, I see him back there. I’m gonna have to give him a name so yeah, I’ll go down lanes like that. Like I’ll just go off into other interests and, you know, whatever. And then all of a sudden something cyber related or something with that world, won’t pop up and I’m like, oh, I gotta look into that.

Anastasia: You know, then I go off. Yeah. And I have like, huh, I’m one of those people who has. A gazillion Google tabs. but they’re all organized. It’s like I know each group and what they’re for its I’m weird. Just, just

Chris: ignore me. No, I mean, I’m always curious to hear how people manage that and organize that information mentally.

Chris: Yeah. That’s effective. That’s an effective way to do it. Right. So let’s talk about your passion for. And your initiative for merging art and design with cyber. Is art something that you’ve been involved with your whole life or, you know, at what point did you get into it?

Anastasia: I started with photography and one, one day my night shift partner and I, we were like best, best friends.

Anastasia: Sadly. He passed away. He was so. Other worldly. Like, I almost wonder if he was really human or not. Sometimes he was looking at my, my photography, just some stuff I took on my phone. And we started talking about like symmetry and just got into like this really deep. just, that’s what you get with me.

Anastasia: Okay. We go like way out there. so he basically inspired me to start creating symmetrical art and out of nature. And I was. This is so cool. just to me, you know, I’m, that’s how I am. I, I do this cuz I like to do it. Whether somebody else likes it or doesn’t like, it that’s totally up to them. You know? I don’t it’s therapeutic for you.

Anastasia: Yeah, exactly. That’s a part of that time I give to myself, like you were just saying, like that’s what I do. I go into my art artistic zone and I just start thinking, but yeah, so it, it went from. From that to just now, like coming up with the Friday 15 and going well, like merch would be cool, you know? So like, I’ll just look at creating, you know, apparel and, and I was doing shoes before I was, I was doing shoes, just like I, again, cuz I liked to do it before, but not with any like specific purpose.

Anastasia: and then it just came to me and I was like, yeah, you know I’m.

Chris: So you came up with that on your own. Yeah. Cause that’s, that’s crazy. Now tell me about your shoe line. Cause this is a shoe line designed specifically for cybersecurity professionals.

Anastasia: So one of my jobs in life was I worked at lady Footlocker and foot action for a long time, very long time.

Anastasia: I’m a sneakerhead shoe head. Like all of that stuff. I love shoes. So I’ve always, you know, I’ve always been into shoes, so I’m like, well, I’m just gonna, you know, try to design my own shoes. So then I was doing that just for me, but then I started coming up with the business ideas and I was like, okay. How do you, you know, how do you make people get into something?

Anastasia: How do you build a culture? How do you, you know, like what what’s gonna get somebody’s attention and be interested in what you’re trying to do. And I was like, well, I like shoes and I like art and I don’t see anybody posting anything about, you know, art merge or anything. That’s cyber culture. I see cyber is better cyber culture related.

Anastasia: Cyber is always in everything. Like it just describes the whole cyber sphere. whatever you wanna call it. I mean, this is, and to be like, really like back to, Pablo’s, right? Like that futuristic thinking it’s like soon everything will be like that everything is gonna be in like a cyber sphere. It’s just like a black mirrors episode in real life.

Anastasia: I’m just saying it. I feel like that’s. How could it not go there? What, unless the world blew up, then how you know . Yeah. I don’t know. That’s just me.

Chris: I’d like to quickly get your thoughts on AI and the metaverse. So how do you think that human centric technology will evolve?

Anastasia: They just are now. Lifting the gates to the metaverse like they’re talking about it now.

Anastasia: Like Facebook is, oh, we’re meta now, you know, so yeah. It’s, you know, built your avatar. They’re already like lifting those gates slowly. And so then again, we look at cyber con cyber human consciousness and it’s a spectrum. And you’ve got the people who know, who are aware, who know, who live that life. Most of them probably in our realm, cyber realm here, mm-hmm are already at the front of that line.

Anastasia: What, because they, this what they’re into, they want to, you know, some people are like, no, but some things are in inevitable, you know? So, yeah. And then you’ve got all the people way, way, way in the back that are like no clue. What a, what is a meta. So, you know, and that’s

Chris: dangerous, that’s dangerous cuz I don’t think they understand fully what they’re getting into and what they’re signing up for voluntarily or involuntarily

Chris: So I think that there needs to be a clear cut line and that goes back to the communication piece and getting that message across for cyber, but also getting the message across for privacy and what, you know, the person out there that’s not even immersed insecurity or it like someone that’s running a used bookstore on the corner.

Chris: Yeah. How do we get

Anastasia: to them? Yeah. That, and that’s what I’m saying. So if you, if somebody, if more people had this level of thinking like you and I are discussing here at a critical mass in the it space to be able to convince people that have platforms. So like for example, Elon Musk, Twitter, all of that stuff.

Anastasia: I had put a post on LinkedIn and I was like, Hey, Elon, you know, I heard about Twitter. So when are you gonna start like a Twitter wide campaign about cybersecurity awareness? Like, but I don’t mean it to be like, lame. I mean, make it. Hip to culture now and put it out there. What, and I don’t know exactly what that may be, but somehow you pop in a video every now you do it for everything else.

Anastasia: You put videos up in front of us for everything else. Can’t you put in a cybersecurity awareness, something every now and then anybody who works for these big platforms. Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, whatever, anybody who’s there on those teams. Should be like, we have the platform, like I wanna know what their security awareness department looks like on the inside.

Anastasia: Yeah. Yeah. Just saying I do

Chris: so you’re in Montana. What are some cool bars there that you like to go to?

Anastasia: The Montana bars that I used to go to are no longer. They no longer exist. Everything has changed in the last 10 years. And so. Don’t really like to go out now in the past we had, you know, we had a couple cool little spots where they would play, you know, a mixture of country Western and hip hop.

Anastasia: really? Oh yeah. Nice. So, yeah. You know, and I would just get like vodka lemonades or ruing Cokes. Okay.

Chris: Well, I just heard last call here. You got time for one more. Yeah. If you opened a cybersecurity theme, What would the name be? And what would your signature drink be called?

Anastasia: Well, I would call it cyber bar bistro because okay.

Anastasia: It’s, it’s always a bar and it’s always cyber security professionals and practitioners, you know, zone vibe. But at night it turns into a club. So it’s a bistro and a bar and in the daytime and at night, it’s a. Because we still want to mix and mingle with our, our professional, you know, acquaintances, but we wanna also be able to be ourself, which is again why I created the, the Friday 15.

Anastasia: So yeah, I’ve already thought about this and I thought about virtual reality in the bar also, or like little rooms where you could go and host parties or something like that. And it has virtual reality in it. That’d be cool.

Chris: All right. How about a signature.

Anastasia: Oh, signature drink. You, well, I can, I’ll just name the drink and you tell me what’s in it because I don’t even know

Anastasia: All right, let’s do it. Let me call it Yolo.

Chris: Yolo. Yes. Oh shit. And you’re gonna make me think now

Anastasia: and I say Yolo because throughout my time in cybersecurity and the many different sock teams that I’ve worked with, it was often said it was often said to Yolo and that’s you only live once .

Chris: Yeah, but how do we, oh, man.

Chris: Now you put me up against the wall. I gotta think it’s gotta have red bull in it. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t either. So not even red bull, like you gotta get a red line in there. Like you gotta get one of those like straight up drinks that you walk into, like the vitamin shop with the skull and crossbone on it.

Chris: Yeah. That says do not drink or, or only drink like a sip.

Anastasia: Right warning

Chris: yeah. Warning. Yeah. So you basically pour that in with vodka and there’s your drink

Anastasia: or like you could have, you could, it could be warning, right? So like there’s a tagline it’s warning, and everybody knows you don’t drink a Yolo unless you’ve updated your software.

Anastasia: And what is updating your software? Well, there’s a recipe of some kind of a food you have to eat before you take this shot or else you’ll be totally ed. Ooh, you like that? Oh, you like that? Oh,

Chris: I like that. Asia. Thanks so much for stopping by. I appreciate it. We’ll definitely have to get up whether it’s here or in Montana at some point.

Chris: Yeah. But thanks for sharing your knowledge and I’ll put your links out there so everybody can check out your, your awesome, awesome merch that you got going on and, and a lot of your ideas too. So thanks again.

Anastasia: Yeah, I appreciate, I appreciate the opportunity. It was such a pleasure to meet you. Thank you so much.

Chris: Thanks. Take Care.