Farah Chamseddine Cyber Security Architect at Microsoft
E
lsewhere in this edition Lena Smart—who
applications, joined a penetration testing course
has been the inaugural CISO of three major
and worked with my manager to dedicate time for
organisations—says she is much more
cybersecurity responsibilities.”
interested in hiring people for cybersecurity
curiosity and will explore cybersecurity issues, driven
FROM SOFTWARE ENGINEERING TO STRATEGIC CONSULTING
primarily by that curiosity, than in hiring those with
With her new-found interest in cybersecurity
university training.
Chamseddine moved from her technical role in
roles who have an innate sense of
software engineering to a strategic consulting role in It was just such a sense of curiosity that took
governance, risk and compliance (GRC) and then to
Farah Chamseddine—now a cybersecurity
her current role in security architecture. She is very
architect at Microsoft—from software engineering
happy with her career choice.
into cybersecurity. “Cybersecurity is a vast field that offers different “I was working as a software engineer in the
opportunities. This has allowed me to have a career
education sector, responsible for reviewing
where I could always develop my skills, experience
applications developed by third party vendors
different roles, and ensure it was the right choice
against functional and non-function specifications,”
for me. The broad spectrum of roles in the domain
she says. “I became really interested in ensuring
have validated that I made the right choice in
these applications were protected against malicious
my specialisation.
or accidental misuse, especially because these applications were used by students and teachers.
“The goal for me was always to continue developing my knowledge and skill set in the areas I am
“I started enjoying the challenge of testing
interested in. And this is what helped me to take on
applications for vulnerabilities until they failed
more senior roles and additional responsibilities.”
and then using these learnings to identify security
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requirements for future features and applications.
Chamseddine started out with a degree in computer
I started reading books about securing web
science, which she says, “exposed me to the
W O M E N I N S E C U R I T Y M A G A Z I N E
J A N U A RY • F E B R U A RY 2023
