The Human Element with Valecia Maclin

Nic Fillingham: Hello, and welcome to Security Unlocked, a new podcast from Microsoft, where we unlock insights from the latest in news and research from across Microsoft security engineering and operations teams. I'm Nic Fillingham.

Natalia Godyla: And I'm Natalia Godyla. In each episode, we'll discuss the latest stories from Microsoft security, deep dive into the newest threat intel research and data science.

Nic Fillingham: And profile some of the fascinating people working on artificial intelligence in Microsoft security.

Natalia Godyla: And now let's unlock the pod. Hey Nic, welcome to today's episode. How are you doing today?

Nic Fillingham: Hello Natalia, I'm doing very well, thank you. And very excited for today's episode, episode 21. Joining us today on the podcast is Valecia Maclin, general manager of engineering for customer security and trust someone who we have had on the shortlist to invite onto the podcast since we began. And this is such a great time to have Valecia come and share her story and her perspective being the final episode for the month of March, where we are celebrating women's history month. So many incredible topics covered here in this conversation. Natalia, what were some of your highlights?

Natalia Godyla: I really loved how she brought in her mechanical engineering background to cybersecurity. So she graduated with mechanical engineering degree and the way she described it was that she was a systems thinker. And as a mechanical engineer, she thought about how systems could fail. And now she applies that to cybersecurity and the- the lens of risk, how the systems that she tries to secure might fail in order to protect against attacks. And I just thought that that was such a cool application of a non-security domain to security. What about yourself?

Nic Fillingham: Yeah. Well, I think first of all, Valencia has a- a incredibly relatable story up front for how she sort of found herself pointed in the direction of computer science and security. I think people will relate to that, but then also we spent quite a bit of time talking about the importance of the human element in cybersecurity and the work that Valecia does in her engineering organization around championing and prioritizing, um, diversity inclusion and what that means in the context of cybersecurity.

Nic Fillingham: It's a very important topic. It's very timely. I think it's one that people have got a lot of questions about, like, you know, we're hearing about DNI and diversity and inclusion, what is it? What does it mean? What does it mean for cybersecurity? I think Valecia covers all of that in thi- in this conversation and her perspective is incredible. Oh, and the great news is, as you'll hear at the end, Valecia is hiring. So if you like me are inspired by this conversation, great news is actually a bunch of roles that you can go and, uh, apply for to go and work for Valecia on her team.

Natalia Godyla: On with the pod?

Nic Fillingham: On with the pod. Valecia Maclin, welcome to the Security Unlocked podcast. Thank you so much for your time.

Valecia Maclin: Thank you, Nic and Natalia.

Nic Fillingham: We'd love to start to learn a bit about you. You're, uh, the general manager of engineering for customer security and trust. Tell us what that means. Tell us about your team, us about the amazing work that you and- and the people on your team do.

Valecia Maclin: I am so proud of our customer security and trust engineering team. Our role is to deliver solutions and capabilities that empower us to ensure our customers trust in our services and our products. So I have teams that build engineering capabilities for the digital crimes unit. We build compliance capabilities for our law enforcement and national security team. And our team makes sure that law enforcement agencies are in compliant with their local regulatory responsibilities and that we can meet our obligations to protect our customers.

Valecia Maclin: I have another team that provides on national security solutions. We do our global transparency centers on where we can ensure that our products are what we say they are. I have two full compliance engineering teams that build capabilities to automate our compliance at scale for our Microsoft security development lifecycle, as well as, uh, things like, uh, advancing machine learning, advancing open source security, just a wealth of enterprise wide, as well as stakeholder community solutions. Um, I could go on and on. We do digital safety engineering, so a very broad set of capabilities all around the focus and the mission of making sure that the products and services that we deliver to our customers are what we intend and say that they are

Nic Fillingham: Got it. And Valencia so how does your engineering org relate to some of the other larger engineering orgs at Microsoft that are building, uh, security compliance solutions?

Valecia Maclin: So our other Microsoft organizations that do that are often building those capabilities within a particular product engineering group. Um, customer security and trust is actually in our corporate, external and legal affairs function. So we don't have that sales obligation. Our full-time responsibility is looking across the enterprise and delivering capabilities that meet those broad regulatory responsibility. So again, if we think about our digital crimes unit that partners with law enforcement to protect our customers around the world, well building capabilities for them or digital safety, right? If you think about the Christ church call and what happened in New Zealand, we're building capabilities to help with that in partnership with what those product groups may need to do. So, um, so we're looking at compliance more broadly.

Nic Fillingham: Got it. And does your team interface with some of the engineering groups that are developing products for customers?

Valecia Maclin: Absolutely. So when you think about the work that we do in the open source security space, our team is kinda that pointy end of the spear to do, um, that assessment and identify here where some areas are that we need to put some focus and then the engineering, the product engineering groups will then and build, go and build that resiliency into the systems.

Nic Fillingham: To follow up questions. One is on the podcast, we've actually spoken to some- some folks that are on your team. Uh, Andrew Marshall was on an earlier episode. We spoke with Scott Christianson, we've had other members of the digital crimes unit come on and talk about that work, just a sort of a sign post for listeners of the podcast. How does Andrew's work, uh, fit in your organization? How does Scott's work fit into your organization?

Valecia Maclin: So, um, both Andrew and Scott are in a team, um, within my org, uh, that's called security engineering and assurance, and they're actually able to really focus their time on that thought leadership portion. So again, if you think about the engineering groups and the product teams, they have to, you know, really focus on the resiliency of the products, what our team is doing is looking ahead to think about what new threat vectors are. So if you think about the work that Andrew does, he partnered with Harvard and- and other parts of- of Microsoft to really advance thought leadership and how we can interpret adversarial machine learning.

Valecia Maclin: Um, when you think about some of our other work in our open source security space, it is let's look forward at where we need to be on the edge from a thought leadership perspective, let's prototype some capabilities operationalizes, so that it's tangible for the engineering groups that then apply and then, uh, my guys will go and partner with the engineering groups and gi- and girls, right? So- so, um, we will then go and partner with the product groups to operationalize those solutions either as a part of our security, um, development life cycle, or just a general security and assurance practices.

Nic Fillingham: Got it. And I think I- I can remember if it was Scott or Andrew mentioned this, but on a previous podcast, there was a reference to, I think it's an internal tool, something called Liquid.

Valecia Maclin: Liquid, yes, uh, yeah.

Nic Fillingham: Is that, can you talk about that? Cause we, uh, it was hinted at in the previous episode?

Valecia Maclin: Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. So Liquid, um, actually have a full team that builds and sustains Liquid. It is a, um, custom built capability that allows us to basically have sensors within our built systems. Um, and so when you think about our security development life cycle, and you think about our operational security requirements, it's given us a way to automate not only those requirements, but you know, ISO and NIST standards. Um, and then that way, with those hooks into the build systems, we can get a enterprise wide look at the compliance state of our bills as they're going on.

Valecia Maclin: So a developer in a product group doesn't have to think about, am I compliant with SDL? Um, what they can do is, you know, once the- the data is looked at, we can do predictive and reactive analysis and say, hey, you know, there's critical bugs in this part of the application that haven't been burned down within 30 days. And so rath- rather than a lot of manual and testation, we can do, um, compliance a scale. And I- I just mentioned manual and testation of security requirements. Oh, one of my other teams, um, has recently just launched

Valecia Maclin: .. the capability that we're super excited about that leverages what we call Coach UL or used to be called Simile. That again, is automating kind of on the other edge, right? So, with liquid, it's once we pulled in the build data. Um, we're working with the engineering groups in Microsoft now to, um, do the other edge where they don't have to set up a test that they're compliant with security requirements. Um, we're, we're moving very fast to, um, automate that on behalf of the developer, so that again, we're doing security by design.

Nic Fillingham: So, how has your team had to evolve and change, uh, the way that they, they work during this sort of the COVID era, during the sort of work from home? Was your team already set up to be able to securely work remotely or were there sort of other changes you had to make on the fly?

Valecia Maclin: So, you know, uh, as we've been in COVID, my team does respond to phenomenally. We were actually well positioned to work from home and continue to function from home. You know, there were some instances where from an ergonomic perspective, let's get some resources out to folks because maybe their home wasn't designed for them to be there, you know, five days a week. So, the, the technical component of doing the work, wasn't the challenge. What I, as a leader continuously emphasized, and it's what, what my team needed, frankly, is making sure we stayed with the connectedness, right?

Valecia Maclin: How do we continue to make sure that folks are connected, that they don't feel isolated? That, you know, they feel visibility from their, from their managers? And consider I had, I had 10 new people start in the past year, entirely through COVID including three new college hires. So, can you imagine starting your professional-

Nic Fillingham: Wow.

Valecia Maclin: ... career onboarding and never being in the office with your peers or colleagues and, and, you know, and the connected tissue you would typically organically have to build relationships. And so through COVID, during COVID, we've had to be very creative about building and sustaining the connective tissue of the team. Making sure that we were understanding folks, um, personal needs and creating a safe space for that. You know, I was a big advocate way back in August where I said, Hey folks, you know, 'cause the sch- I knew the school year was starting. And even though we hadn't made any statements yet about when returned to work would, you know, would advanced to, I made a statements to my team of, Hey, it's August, we've been at this for a few months. It's not going anywhere anytime soon.

Valecia Maclin: So, I don't want us carrying ourselves as if we're coming back to the office tomorrow. Let's, you know, give folks some space to reconcile what this is gonna look like if they have childcare, if they have elder care, if they're just frozen from being in- indoors this amount of time. Let's make sure that we're giving each other space for that. Also during the past year, you know, certainly we had, I would say, parallel once in a generation type events, right?

Valecia Maclin: So, we had COVID, but we also had, uh, increased awareness, you know, of, of the racial inequities in our country. And for me as a woman of color that's in cybersecurity, I've spent my entire career being a, a series of first, um, particularly at the executive table. And so, you know, so it was a, an opportunity we also had in the past year to advance that conversation so that we could extend one another grace, right? So I personally was touched by COVID. I, I lost five people in the past year. Um, and I was also-

Nic Fillingham: I'm so sorry.

Valecia Maclin: Yeah. (laughs) And you keep showing up, right? And I was personally touched as a black woman who once again, has to be concerned about, you know, I have, uh, I have twin nephews that are 19, one's autistic and the other is not, but we won't allow him to get a driver's license yet 'cause he, my, my sister's petrified because, you know, that's a real fear that a young man who's 6'1", sweetest thing you would ever see, soft-spoken, um, but he's 6'1". He has, you know, dreadlocks in his hair or locks. He would hate to hear me say they were dreads. He has locks in his hair. Um, and he dresses like a 19 year old boy, right?

Valecia Maclin: But on spot, that's not what the world sees. And so, um, that's what we're all in. Then you think about what's happening now with our Asian-American community. That's also bundled with folks who are human, having to be isolated and endorse, which that's not how humanity was designed. And so we have to remember that that shows up. And, and when you're in, in the work of security, where you're always thinking about threat actors, and I often say that some of our best security folks have kind of some orthogonal thinking that's necessary to kind of deal with the different nuances.

Valecia Maclin: When you, when you are thinking about how do you build resiliency against ever evolving threats, (laughs) not withstanding the really massive one that, you know, was the next one we, we dealt with at the end of the last calendar year. Those are all things that work in the circle. And I always say that people build systems, they don't build themselves. And in this time more than ever, hopefully, as security professionals, we're remembering the human element. And we're remembering that the work that we do, um, has purpose, which is, you know, why I entered this space in, in the first and why I've spent my career doing the things I've done is because we have a phenomenal responsibility increasingly in a time of interconnectedness from a technology perspective to secure our way of life.

Nic Fillingham: Wow. Well, on, on that note, you talked about sort of why you went into security. I'd love to sort of, I'd love to go there. Would you mind talking us through how you sort of first learnt of security and, and why you're excited about it, and how you made the decision to, to go into that space?

Valecia Maclin: Absolutely. So, mine actually started quite awhile ago. I was majoring in mechanical engineering and material science, uh, at Duke university. I was in my junior year and, um, I should preface it with, I did my four year engineering degree in three and a half years. So, my, my junior year was pretty intense. I worked, was working on a project for mechanical engineering that I'd spent about seven hours on and I lost my data.

Nic Fillingham: Ah!

Valecia Maclin: I was building a model, literally, I sat at the computer because, you know, you know, back then, you know, there weren't a whole lot of computer resources, so you try to get there early and, and, and snag the computer so that you could use it as long as you needed to. I went in actually, on a holiday because I knew everybody would be gone. So, if I, I could have the full day and not have to give up the computer to someone. So, I'd spend seven hours building this model and it disappeared.

Valecia Maclin: And it was the, you know, little five in a 10 floppy, I'm pulling it out, I'm looking at the box (laughs). It's gone. The, the, the model's gone. I was gonna have to start all over. I started my homework over again, but then I said, I will never lose a homework assignment like that again. So, I went and found a professor in the computer science school to agree to do an independent study with me, because as a junior, no one was gonna allow me to change my major for mechanical engineering that far in, at Duke University. So, (laughs) not, not my parents, anyway. So, I, um, did an independent study in computer science and taught myself programming. So, I taught myself programming, taught myself how to understand the hardware with, with my professors help, of course. But it was the work I did with that independent study that actually led to the job I was hired into when I graduated.

Valecia Maclin: So, I've never worked as a mechanical engineer. I immediately went into doing national security work, um, where I worked for companies that were in the defense industrial base for the United States. And so I, I started and spent my entire career building large scale information systems for, you know, the DOD, for the intelligence community, and that vectored into my main focus on large, um, security systems that I was developing, or managing, or leading solutions through. So, it started with loss data, right? (laughs) You know, which is so apropos for where we are today, but it started with, you know, losing data on a software, in a software application and me just being so frustrated

Valecia Maclin: Straight and said, that's never gonna happen to me again (laughs) that, um, that led me to pursue work in this space.

Natalia Godyla: How did your degree in mechanical engineering inform your understanding of InfoSec? As you were studying InfoSec, did you feel like you were bringing in some of that knowledge?

Valecia Maclin: One of the beautiful things and that was interesting is I would take on new roles, I'll, I'll never forget. Um, I, I got wonderful opportunities as, as my career was launched and folks would ask me, well, why are you gonna go do that job? You've never done that before, you know, do you know it? (laughs) And so what that taught me is, you know, you don't have to know everything about it going in, you just need to know how to address the problem, right? So, I consider myself a systems thinker, and that's what my mechanical engineering, um, background provided was look at the whole system, right? And so how do you approach the problem? And also because I also had a material science component, we studied failures a lot. So, material failure, how that affected infrastructure, you know, when a bridge collapse or, or starts to isolate. Um, so it was that taking a systems view and then drilling down into the details to predictively, identify failures and then build resiliency to not have those things happen again. Is that kind of that, that level of thinking that played into when I went into InfoSec.

Natalia Godyla: That sounds incredibly fitting. So, what excites you today about InfoSec or, or how has your focus in InfoSec changed over time? What passions have you been following?

Valecia Maclin: So, for me, it's the fact that it's always going to evolve, right? And so, you know, obviously the breaches make the headlines, but I'm one, we should never be surprised by breaches, just like we shouldn't be surprised by car thefts or home invasions, or, you know, think about the level of insurance, and infrastructure, and technology, and tools and habits (laughs) that we've, uh, we've developed over time for basic emergency response just for our homes or our life, right?

Valecia Maclin: So, for me, it's just part of the evolution that we have, that there's always gonna be something new and there's always gonna be that actor that's gonna look to take a shortcut, that's gonna look to take something from someone else. And so in that regard, it is staying on the authence of building resiliency to protect our way of life. And so I, I am always passionate and again, it's, it's likely how I, you know, spent almost, you know, over 27 years of my career is protecting our way of life. But protecting it in a way where for your everyday citizen, they don't have to go and get the degree in computer science, right?

Valecia Maclin: That they can have confidence in the services and the, the things that they rely on. They can have confidence that their car system's gonna break, that the brakes are gonna hit, you know, activate when they hit it. That's the place I wanna see us get to as it relates to the dependency we now have on our computer systems, and in our internet connected devices and, and IOT and that sort of thing. So, that's what makes me passionate. Today it may look like multi-factored authentication and, you know, zero trust networks, but tomorrow is gonna look like something completely different. And what I, where I'd love to see us get is, you know, think about your car. We don't freak out about the new technologies that show up in our car, you know, 'cause we know how, we, we, we get in and we drive and, and we anxiously await some people.

Valecia Maclin: I, I'm kind of a control freak, I wanna still drive my car. I don't want it to drive itself (laughter). Um, but nevertheless, with each, you know, generational evolution of the car, we didn't freak out and say, Oh my gosh, it's doing this now. If we can start to get there to where there's trust and confidence. And, and that's why I love, you know, what my org is responsible for doing is, you know, that there's trust and confidence that when Microsoft, when you have a Microsoft product or service, you, you, you can trust that it's doing what you intend for it to do. And, and that's not just for here, but then, you know, when you're again, whether it's the car, or your refrigerator, or your television, that's where I'd love to, that's where I want to see us continue to evolve. Not only in the capabilities we deliver, but as a society, how we expect to interact with them.

Natalia Godyla: Are you particularly proud of any projects that you've run or been part of in your career?

Valecia Maclin: I am. And it's actually what led me to Microsoft, I had my greatest career success, but it, it came also at, at a time of, of, of my greatest personal loss. Literally they were concurrent on top of each other. And so I was responsible, I was the, the business executive responsible for the cybersecurity version of, of, of the JEDI program. Uh, so I was the business executive architecting our response to that work that was what the department of Homeland Security. I worked for a company that at the time wasn't known for cybersecurity, and so it was a monumental undertaking to get that responsibility. And the role was to take over and then modernize the cybersecurity re- system responsible for protecting the .gov domain. So, it was tremendously rewarding, especially in the optic that we have today. I received the highest award that my prior company gives to an individual.

Valecia Maclin: I was super proud of the team that I was able to lead and, and keep together during all the nuances of stop, start, stop, start that government contracting, um, does when there's protests. But during that same time, you know, 'cause it was, so it was one of those once in a career type opportunities, if you've ever done national security work, to actually usher an anchor in a brand new mission is how we would label it, um, that you would be delivering for the government. But at the same time, that, that wonderfully challenging both technically and from a business perspective scenario was going on, I, in successive moments, lost my last grandparent, suddenly lost my sister. 12 months later, suddenly lost my mother, six months later had to have major surgery. So, that all came in succession while I was doing this major once in a career initiative that was a large cyber security program to protect our government.

Valecia Maclin: And I, I survived, (laughs) right? So, um, the, the program started and did well, but I, I then kind of took a step back, right? Once I, I, uh, I'd promised the company at the time of the government that I would, I would give it a year, right? I would make sure the program transitioned since we'd worked so hard to get there. And then I took a step back and said, Hmm, what do I really wanna do? This was a lot (laughs). And so I did take a step back and got a call from Microsoft, actually, um, amongst some other companies. Uh, I thought it was gonna take a break, but clearly, um, others had, had different ideas. And so, um, (laughter) I had, I had multiple opportunities presented to me, but what was so intriguing and, and what drew me to Microsoft was first of all, the values of the company. You know, I'm a values driven person and the values, um mean a lot and I'm gonna come back to that in a moment.

Valecia Maclin: But then also I, I mentioned that the org I lead is in corporate external and legal affairs. It's not within the product group. It's looking at our global obligations to securing our products and services from a, not just a regulatory perspective, but not limited by our, our sales target. And so the ability to be strategic in that way is what was intriguing and what, what drew me. When you think about the commitments the company has made to its employees and to its vendors during a time, um, that we've been in, it says a lot about the fabric of, of who we are to take that fear of employability insurance and those sorts of things that are basic human needs, to recall how early on we still had our cafeteria services going so that they could then go and provide meals for, for students who would typically get school meals. And at the same

Valecia Maclin: ... time it meant that those vendors that provide food services could continue to do their work. When you think about our response to the racial inequity and, and justice, social justice initiative, and the commitments were not only, not only made, but our, our keeping is the fabric of the company and the ability to do the work that I'm passionate about, that, that drew me here.

Nic Fillingham: You talked about bringing the human element to security. What does that mean to you and how have you tried to bring that sort of culturally into your organization and, and, and beyond?

Valecia Maclin: So, if you think about the human element of security, the operative word is human. And so as humans, we are a kaleidoscope of gender, and colors, and nationalities and experiences. Even if you were in the same town, you have a completely different experience that you can bring to bear. So, when I think about how I introduce, um, diversity, equity and inclusion in the organization that I lead, it is making sure that we're more representative of who we are as humans. And sometimes walking around Redmond, that you don't always get that, but it's the, you know, I, I come from the East Coast. So, you know, one of the going phrases I would use a lot is, I'm not a Pacific Northwestner or I don't have this passive aggressiveness down, I'm pretty direct (laughs). And so that's a different approach, right, to how we do our work, how we lean in, how we ask questions.

Valecia Maclin: And so I am incredibly passionate about increasing the opportunities and roles for women and underrepresented minorities, underrepresented, uh, minorities in cybersecurity. And so we've been very focused on, you know, not just looking at internal folks that we may have worked on, worked on another team, you know, for years, and making sure that every opportunity in my organization is always opened up both internally and externally. They're always opened up to make sure that we're, we're looking beyond our mirror image to, um, hire staff. And it's powerful having people that think the same way you do, because you can coalesce very quickly. But the flip side of that is sometimes you can lose some innovation because everybody's seeing the same thing you see. And, and it's so important in, in security because we're talking about our threat actors typically having human element, is making sure that we can understand multiple voices and multiple experiences as we're designing solutions, and as we're thinking about what the threats may be.

Natalia Godyla: So, for women or, uh, members of minority groups, what guidance do you have for them if they're not feeling empowered right now in security, if they don't know how to network, how to find leaders like yourself, who are supporting DNI?

Valecia Maclin: One of the things I always encourage folks to do, and, and I mentor a lot is, just be passionate about who you are and what you contribute. But what I would say, uh, Natalia, is for them to take chances, not be afraid to fail, not be afraid to approach people you don't know, um, something that I got comfortable with very early as if I was somewhere and heard a leader speak on stage somewhere, or I was, uh, you know, I saw someone on a panel internally or externally, I would go up to them afterwards and introduce myself and ask, you know, would you be willing to have a career discussion with me? Can I get 30 minutes on your calendar? And so that was just kind of a normal part of my rhythm, which allowed me to be very comfortable, getting to meet new executive leaders and share about myself and more importantly, hear about their journeys.

Valecia Maclin: And the more you hear about other's journey, you can help cultivate a script for your own. And so, so that's what I often encourage 'cause a lot of times folks are apr- afraid, particularly women and, and minorities are afraid to approach to say, think, well, you know, I don't know enough, or I don't know what to ask. It can be as simple as, I heard you speak, I would love to hear more about your story. Do you have time? Do you have 20 minutes? And then let, you know, relationships start from there and let the learning start from there.

Nic Fillingham: As a leader in the security space, as a leader at Microsoft, what are you excited about for the future? What what's sort of coming in terms of, you know, it could be cultural change, it could be technology innovation. What, what are you sort of looking and seeing in the next three, five, 10 years?

Valecia Maclin: For me it the cultural change. I'm looking forward and you heard me kind of allude to a little bit of this of, you now have the public increasingly aware of what happens when there's data loss. I'm so excited to look forward to that moment when that narrative shifts and the public learns and knows more of security hygiene, cyber security hygiene. And, and not, you know, both consumer and enterprise, because we take for granted that enper- enterprises have nailed this. And, and we're in a unique footing as a company to have it more part of our DNA, but not every company does. And so that's what I'm looking forward to for the future is the culture of that young person in the midst of schooling, not having to guess about what a cybersecurity or security professional is, much like they don't guess what a lawyer or a doctor is, right? So, that's what I look forward to for the future.

Nic Fillingham: Any organizations, groups that you, you know, personally support or fans of that you'd also like to plug?

Valecia Maclin: Sure. So, I actually support a, a number of organizations. I support an organization called Advancing Minorities in Engineering, which works directly with historically black colleges and universities to not only increase their learning, but also create opportunities to extend the representation in security. I also am a board member of Safe Code, which is also focused on advancing security, design, hygiene across enterprises, small midsize and large businesses. And so, so those are, are certainly, uh, a couple of, of organizations that, you know, I dedicate time to.

Valecia Maclin: I would just encourage folks, you know, we have TEALS, we have DigiGirlz. everyone has a role to play to help expand the perception of what we do in the security space. We're not monolithic. The beauty of us as a people is that we can bring our differences together to do some of the most phenomenal, innovative things. And so that would be my ask is in, whatever way fits for where someone is, that they reach out to someone and make that connection. I v- I very often will reach down and, uh, I'll have someone, you know, a couple levels down and say, Oh my gosh, I can't believe you called and asked for a one-on-one.

Valecia Maclin: So, I don't wait for folks to ask for a one-on-one with me. I, I'll go and ping and just, you know, pick someone and say, Hey, you know, I wanna, I just wanna touch base with you and see how you're doing and see what you're thinking about with your career. All of us can do that with someone else and help people feel connected and seen.

Natalia Godyla: And just to wrap here, are you hiring, are there any resources that you want to plug or share with our audience, might be interested in continuing down some of these topics?

Valecia Maclin: Absolutely. Thank you so much. Um, so I am hiring, hiring data architects, 'cause you can imagine that we deal with high volumes of data. I'm hiring software engineers, I'm hiring, uh, a data scientist. So, um, data, data, and more data, right?

Natalia Godyla: (laughs).

Valecia Maclin: And, um, and software engineers that are inquisitive to figure out the, the right ways for us to, you know, make the best use of it.

Natalia Godyla: Awesome. Well, thank [crosstalk 00:35:11] you for that. And thank you for joining us today, Valecia.

Valecia Maclin: Thank you, Natalia. Thank you, Nic. I really enjoyed it.

Natalia Godyla: Well, we had a great time unlocking insights into security from research to artificial intelligence. Keep an eye out for our next episode.

Nic Fillingham: And don't forget to tweet us @msftsecurity or email us at securityunlocked@microsoft.com with topics you'd like to hear on a future episode. Until then, stay safe.

Natalia Godyla: Stay secure.