Women in Security
First in reverse for Australia
Noushin Shabab, Senior Security Researcher, Kaspersky Lab
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oushin is Kaspersky Lab’s first security researcher from the Australian and New Zealand (ANZ) region as a Global Research & Analysis Team (GReAT) member and is the first woman in ANZ that specialises in reverse engineering. With more than 5 years in the security industry, Noushin has been with Kaspersky Lab since July, 2016. How did you get into the Security Industry? I started my career in cyber security as a junior malware analyst a Windows antivirus team for a cyber security company called AmnPardaz. After a few years when I became more proficient in malware analysis and reverse engineering I moved to the company’s newly setup antirootkit team as a senior malware analyst and software developer. The last role I had in AmnPardaz was leading a small malware analysis team of the Android antivirus product which was again a new project. I have always been fascinated by solving problems, especially with puzzles and board games. I learned computer programming relatively early when I was in middle school and in high school I competed in a number of national programming contests. By high school I definitely knew that I wanted to pursue a career in computing, so I naturally did a degree in computing in university. After finishing university, I was not specifically thinking of getting into cyber security but then my first professional role happened to be with a cyber security company as a malware analyst. As I started to work in this field I realised
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it’s something I really liked to do and I continued in this field since that time. How did your current position come about? I was looking for a job in cybersecurity specialising in my field of reverse engineering. There was a slim margin of jobs in that field. However, after a few months, Kaspersky Lab placed an ad offering a researcher role in cybersecurity. Unlike the other interviews I attended, Kaspersky Lab was the only company to actually examine my technical skills, especially with my niche in reverse engineering. A tough piece of homework was given to me to solve after my first interview. Although it was a malware written in a programming language I was not familiar with, I jumped at the chance. Vitaly Kamluk, my direct manager who previously worked for INTERPOL, said my results exceeded his expectations and that was how I landed my dream job! What are some of the key challenges you think the industry is faced with and what difference do women in leadership roles make to meet these challenges? We in cyber security industry are all fighting with cybercrime and a very important challenge in my perspective, is how to join our forces to win this battle against bad guys. Countless cases showed that cyber criminals are very skilled today and for the industry to be able to overcome their skillset, broad and diverse vision in this field is essential. This is where I believe women bring the solution by addressing this diversity in the point of views.