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Women in Information Security: Anna Westelius

Last time, I had the honor of speaking with Veronica of DFIRLABS. She’s a self-described cyborg who got into cybersecurity early and has a passion for reverse engineering code.

This time, I got to speak with Anna Westelius. Not only is she a web security specialist; she also has experience with Linux driver development. What do Anna and I have in common with Girl with the Dragon Tattoo protagonist Lisbeth Salander?

Kim Crawley: Hi, Anna! Please tell me a bit about what you do and how you got there.

Anna Westelius: Currently, I’m senior director of security research over at a web security company in San Francisco called Distil Networks. We focus on combating the automated threat, and my role is to help improve our services and products through threat research, a lot of testing and security analysis. I’ve been running organizations, mainly focusing on security analysis, for the better part of the last 10 years in various roles.

I’d like to say that I started my tech career in the crib. I’ve been picking apart mechanical things for as long as I can remember, then building home networks and computers as a kid. I then had the luxury of stumbling into a computer club in the high school basement where the home built Linux distribution forced all involved to write their own drivers for any hardware we wanted to use. I eventually ended up getting a job writing ActionScript for direct marketing companies before starting my own company with two illustrators doing web development and security consultancy. Running my own company was a fantastic experience, but in some strange longing for a “real job,” I switched up and started doing Network Security Analysis for an MSSP in Stockholm and eventually went on to run their Security Operations and (Read more...)