Lockheed Martin wouldn’t be a leader in digital safety without top talent. As we are committed to securing our customers missions with world-class defense technology, hundreds of cyber experts across Lockheed Martin are working keeping that technology safe.
Sheldon Thomas
Chief Principal Engineer
Q: Why is Lockheed Martin a great place to work? A: Lockheed Martin has been a great place to work mainly because of the diversity of opportunity. I've had a chance to work across multiple organizations and customers, doing stuff from hardware systems to software development and information technology. And that kind of variability has been interesting. Nothing ever gets stale. You can find new projects and new opportunities within the company and you don't have to change badges. Q: What do you love about your job? A: I think the thing that always stands out to me about the jobs that I've had or that I've kind of gravitated to over time, there's just a really good mix of being technical and nontechnical. You know, my current job as a chief engineer you think is a lot of dealing with technology and it is, I mean, there is a lot to do with that. But it's also understanding budgets, dealing with people and understanding how the business works, how to get things accomplished within the business system and also within a customer environment. This customer relationships are the most important thing that you have to manage and it makes every day unique. Q: So how did you get involved with cybersecurity? A: I think it kind of fell into it! I mean, my entire career I've always been around IT systems, computer systems, and hardware. And when I say hardware, I mean like looking at processors, systems, chip design and that kind of stuff. So I've always been around things that that have to do with the roots of cyber work. And eventually, there were some opportunities and a huge need for people to do cybersecurity. And, you know, I looked at it as an opportunity to learn to learn more about the computer side of the house in a deeper way. And so I jumped in and took on the challenge of a role doing cybersecurity work. Q: So what role does diversity and inclusion have within cybersecurity? A: A large role in my opinion. You know, when you really think about the process--that hackers and other folks that are trying to get into or disrupt systems--there's a lot of diversity of thought and creativity that goes into that by understanding how a system works and how they break. I think to counter that you also need to have that same level of diversity and thought and I think that comes from having people who have varying backgrounds and experiences that can come to the table. They may not look at a problem the same way that everyone else is looking at a problem. Q: How has cyber technology changed during your career? A: So when I started my career, there wasn't a thing called an iPhone and Facebook didn't exist. And you know, things like artificial intelligence and machine learning weren't really things that were widely talked about. I mean, yeah, people were applying it to win a chess match or something like that, but it wasn't as prevalent in our society as it is today. Nowadays, you have a lot of very low power computer systems and network technology that have pushed a lot of smart devices into just about every corner of our lives. So along with that, the technologies to try to protect those systems have also entered our lives. Things such encryption, certificates and two factor authentication--all these things that are almost standard across our lives and the world that we're living in did not exist when I started my career. A: What's your advice for how someone can stay safe online? Q: I would say start with the basics. Know where you're going. Know what information you're sharing and be very vigilant. I think if you start with that in mind, you avoid places that put your safety at risk for the most part. Be wary of links and things that you receive from people you know; verify them and make sure that they're going to places that are legitimate. Also be vigilant about your use of passwords and things like two factor authentication that can help prevent people from stealing your identity or hacking into your accounts. Q: How do we stay ahead of future cyber threats? A: That is the tough challenge because technology evolves at a fast pace. Some of the things I mentioned earlier apply--things like continuing to expand the use of things like two factor authentication, the use of proper passwords and questioning how and who you share your information with. I think those are going to be things that will help you as an individual stay safe. In terms of the products and capabilities of technologies, I think some of the things that were that will continue to help us out is integrating security into our development process. I think that's really changed a lot over the last couple of years. And I think that as we continue to move forward, things like DevSecOps integrate security into how we're developing everything from the start. That will help us to keep pace with future cyber threats. I think getting ahead is tough, but keeping pace is something that's definitely possible. Q: What do you think is next for a cyber defense? A: In both the private and public sector, I think you're starting to see how we share information better and at a much faster pace. So that when there is a potential threat that's out there, we can respond quickly and be able to defend ourselves as the threats continue to become more and more sophisticated. In many cases, they're being influenced by people with a lot of organizations with a lot of resources. And the time to respond to an attack is getting shorter and shorter in terms of being able to prevent the loss of service or loss of intellectual property. So what I see as happening next is just more and more close collaboration between entities to allow them to share information much faster, along with how to protect a lot of resources that exist in the cloud as it becomes a major part of our infrastructure and how we operate.
Jamie Jones
Multi-Functional Engineering and Science Manager
Q: How did you get involved in cybersecurity? A: Unknowingly, I took an entry level engineering role at an IC agencies, got another offer at NIH in cyber, and stayed in the field ever since. Q: Who has been your mentor on your cyber journey, and how are you mentoring others? A: I've had so many mentors and mentees informally. Lots of different people have helped me learn individually through different thought processes. While you help others grow, you grow too! Everyone is here to support you no matter what you're doing in your career. Your colleagues can help you create a unique career path, teach you about cyber and help you forage your own path in the field. Q: What’s it like working in the cyber field at Lockheed Martin?A: Career opportunities are endless! You can range from a very technical software developer to leadership and managing programs. LM gives you the option to go back to school and learn more to get certifications or even technical coding. Everyone is super supportive and works together to accomplish our amazing mission. Q: Why is Lockheed Martin a great place to work? A: It's a great place to work surrounded by a great support system. Working around passionate people makes you passionate. Working in this field, we're collaborative and super innovative. Working in the tech industry, we get to digitally transform what we're working on and turn our ideas into reality.
Siddhesh Patel
Program Manager, Senior Manager
Q: What does digital safety mean to you? A: Digital safety means protecting personal and proprietary information. There are many reasons to protect information for private reasons so it's important to maintain and safeguard this information on the personal and company levels. Q: How has digital safety progressed throughout your career? A: Scope has become wider and broader because more technology exists. Before, our connectivity was through computers and IT servers, but now it's also through phones, tablets, and even our smart watches. Technology is more widespread now and it is important to protect all of those mediums. Q: How did you get involved in digital safety? A: I got involved with digital safety primarily through education. I started my career off as a systems engineer and saw the growing demand for cyber security, so I went back to school to pursue a masters. Growing demand in this field, especially through the tech perspective excited me professionally. Q: Tell us about your most memorable/interesting technology project (so far). A: I loved working on the DoD cyber crime project because I got to work on it from the ground up. Q: What do you love about your job? A: I love being able to tackle a different challenge every day. Serving as a leader for my team in an effort to defend our country by keeping U.S. systems safe is super important to me. Q: What’s it like working at Lockheed Martin? A: As an employee at Lockheed Martin, you get to interact with a diverse population from all different backgrounds. In this environment, you're always learning, meeting new people, and working on code in the cyber field. There is a wide gambit of career options and Lockheed Martin makes it easy to move around and try new things. We are Mission First motivated, in an inclusive area, all working to protect from future threats.
Jake Mazur
Cyber Software Engineer
Q: What do you love about your job? A: I love my job because it not only pushes me technically to better myself as an engineer, but it also gives me a lot of opportunity to get involved with other parts of the business. It offers the flexibility to get involved where my interests lie, and provides a lot of opportunity to shape my career in the direction I want it to go. Since joining the company in 2018 as an intern, I've been able to work in a couple different roles. Each new role has brought on new responsibilities, challenges, connections, and experiences. I’ve also had the privilege to take positions of leadership outside my “day job” as an engineer, such as helping lead Lockheed Martin’s Cyber & Intelligence internship program. Q: Why is Lockheed Martin a great place to work? A: Great people, great coworkers--every team I've been on so far has just had amazing people. There's also great work - it's technically challenging, rewarding, and provides lots of opportunity for growth, especially in cyber security. There's such a need in this field right now and building the talent pipeline is where much attention is focused, rightfully so. Also, I enjoy working for Lockheed Martin because of the flexibility it provides. I've been able to make my own schedule, whether it's a 4/10 schedule or a 9/80, and have the flexibility to work around my own personal schedule. Also, there are countless opportunities to grow technically and professionally--not only getting training for new certifications or skills, but also by offering opportunities to take on stretch assignment. In my case, I’ve enjoyed working with business development, recruiting, internship programs, undergraduate campus engagement events, and fundraisers. Q: Why do you think Lockheed Martin is the leader in digital safety? A: I think Lockheed Martin is the leader in digital safety because we are really putting an effort into hiring top talent and we're focused on getting great candidates into rewarding, challenging, and impactful cyber careers they enjoy. Lockheed Martin C&I hosts monthly recruiting events which seek to attract and screen top talent to fill some of our government’s most critical roles. We also have significant history working with various government customers, so we have the merit and track-record required to succeed in new and exciting contracts. Additionally, Cyber & Intelligence sponsors IRADs, which are independent research and development facilities. These IRADs provide us with advantages on building talent and gaining expertise on new and exciting technologies. Employees working in these IRAD departments really get great hands-on experience with some stuff. Q: How did you get involved in cybersecurity? A: I first got interested in cybersecurity through my undergraduate coursework at James Madison University. At the time, I had a class in networking and security and that class just opened up a whole new side of thinking about the Internet that I hadn't really even thought about. And it's kind of funny, because I was still studying Computer Information Systems, so I already had a good understanding of technical concepts. But the networking and security class really opened my eyes to what all needs to happen behind the scenes to make sure that people are secure online, their data stays secure, their systems and networks are unaltered, etc. When the Internet as we know it was first started, security wasn't considered at all--it was definitely an afterthought. The industry in the last handful of years has really adapted to meet the coming threats. And that's kind of been the theme of cybersecurity. It’s definitely not an afterthought anymore. So anyways, that class sparked my initial interest in cyber. After that, during the summer after my junior year, I was offered an internship opportunity with Lockheed Martin with the Cyber and Intelligence division (Cyber Solutions at the time). The internship gave me hands-on experience with developing software, working on a team in a hacking capture the flag competition, collaborating on a technical internship program, among other things. This all furthered my interest and that was really my first hands-on exposure to cybersecurity. From there, my interest in cyber security was cemented, and I accepted a full-time role as a Cyber Software Engineer at Lockheed Martin upon my JMU graduation in May 2019. Q: Who has been your mentor on your cyber journey, and how are you mentoring others? A: I've had a couple different mentors at this point. I've been with the company now for two and a half years. Each time I have left one of my previous teams or projects, I've stayed in touch with the individuals on those teams, and I've developed mentorship relationships with them. A mentor to me is somebody who I look up to and someone that is in a position that I could see myself wanting to take on at some point later in my career. They help add some context and thoughts to my aspirations and provide insight about their own career journey. Mentorship has played a huge role in my career even just over the past couple years. As far as mentoring others, I’ve enjoyed working with the summer internship program, and have had the opportunity to mentor many of them. I look forward to continuing mentoring many of them as they begin their full-time careers with LM, as I’m sure we’ll learn much from each other. Q: What’s your advice for how can someone stay safe online? A: I will say a lot of this advice pertains to things that many people may avoid doing on their own computers. For example, staying on top of updates and patches for your operating system and every any programs you're using. So those messages that come up saying you're X days behind an update—do that as soon as possible. A lot of people just dismiss the notification. But really, the important thing is to stay on top of those because more often than not, a vulnerability will be present in an older version or patch of software. So it's just really important to stay up to date. Also, avoid clicking any links from senders that you don't know or if you’re unaware of what it is that they're even sending. Then also look for, of course, the HTTPS denotation in your browser. That essentially means that your data is encrypted so it would be much more challenging for somebody to be able to get a hold of any input you type into the page. As you can imagine, this is important for things like credit cards, social security numbers, or any other sensitive data. And I guess one final point is it’s better to be skeptical, rather than to be naive. Whenever you're unsure of something or something seems a little fishy (read phishy), then, more often than not, it is just better to go with your gut and avoid taking any risks. People are pretty aware of this at this point I think, since I’m sure we all have gotten those scam calls/messages and have likely seen the stories on the news. Q: What does cybersecurity mean to you? A: From a high level, cybersecurity is the protection of computer systems or networks. And also the data that's held on their systems or networks, so it's kind of intertwined. So, for example, one common framework that I'll bring up is Authentication, Authorization and Availability. For Authentication, that would be the act of ensuring someone is who they say they are. Authorization is ensuring the person has the right permissions to access a certain file or write to a file or perform a certain action. And then Availability is ensuring that a system or its data is available when that data or that system is needed. Q: With technology evolving at such a high rate, how do we stay ahead of future cyber threats? A: One way to do so would be red and blue teaming on specified systems that are important to Lockheed Martin and our customers. The Red Team plays an offensive role--they would try to break into the system, break a program, or extract data when they shouldn't be able to. So when we do that on our own systems--of course, with the approvals for those people to do so--it provides an opportunity to identify weak-points and take the perspective of a threat actor. And then on the other side of that, blue teaming refers to the team that is continually hardening and strengthening those networks or systems and takes on a more defensive role. One other way we stay ahead is by funding IRAD departments which I mentioned earlier. They are really important for working on cutting-edge stuff and doing research for, say what other threat actors might be also doing research on now. So of course, the side that gets that new knowledge first has a big advantage. And then lastly, building a big pipeline of talent that can take on the upcoming threats is important for staying ahead. Cyber security is expanding at a pace that probably many people didn't initially foresee. And so now there's so many open opportunities and work that needs to be completed for our government customers, and not quite the amount of people that we need to fill those roles. So building that pipeline of talent to take on those future responsibilities that the government is looking for is going to be really important for staying ahead of future cyber threats.
Yajayra Lorshbaugh
Q: What’s next for cyber defense? A: Behavioral analytics to help determine patterns for future threats will helpful in preventing future breaches. Embedded hardware authentication provides an extra level of security when identifying a user's identity. Finally, Blockchain security creates a near-impenetrable network to keep hackers at bay. A lot of machine learning and AI evolve into the next generation to protect from hardware Q: How did you get involved in digital safety? A: My major was IT. I’ve supported cyber programs a large part of my career and I am prior Army so, it’s been part of my upbringing. Q: What role do diversity and inclusion have in cybersecurity? A: We deal with some really complicated issues in cybersecurity, and we need that talent to address those problems. Diversity also facilitates the representation of different worldviews and different experiences. People with varied life experiences will come at problems differently. Q: Why do you think Lockheed Martin is a leader in digital safety? A: I honestly think is rooted in our values, our core. We have a long history in partnering with the government and industry to innovate, serve and protect our nation. It’s just what we do, so that drive translates to excellence, in this case, in digital safety. Q: What do you love about your job? A: I love my job. I love that I have a platform to influence positive change in people. I like solving problems and helping our employees, customer and teammates reach their goals. That is when I am in the zone.
Jennifer Kielman
Cyber Security Engineering Associate Manager
Q: What’s your advice for how can someone stay safe online? A: Limit your social media presence and change your passwords to make them hard to get into. Q: Why do you think Lockheed Martin is a leader in digital safety? A: We take the time to train so we can perform the best and be the most knowledgeable in digital safety and we keep up to date with the information to be successful in our jobs. Q: What do you love about your job? A: I love the flexibility to stay within Lockheed and work with our partners by being able to learn new things in different programs. Q: How does Lockheed Martin’s approach translate to innovative leadership in the cyber industry? A: Lockheed promotes training in the cyber and leadership levels and we can bring these skills to work for our customers.
Angelo Said
Systems Engineer
Q. What role do diversity and inclusion have in cybersecurity? A: The diversity of backgrounds--whether it be military, working in trades, or another professional career--from all my coworkers and mentors has shown me that there's a major benefit having diversity. I'm able to kind of learn from a lot of different experiences that everybody else provides, so a lot of that tribal knowledge from different areas is passed on throughout programs. Everybody else brings something new to the table. It helps keep massive systems up and going and sometimes helps come up with simple solutions to complex problems. Especially when you're kind of doing something that's new or in uncharted territories. Q: Why is Lockheed Martin a great place to work? A: Lockheed Martin has a variety of technical fields that you can work in. So if an engineer were to select software engineering, they can start out doing that and then after a year or so, transition into hardware engineering. There’s variety of different technical career paths that people can experiment in, explore and learn from, without ever having to change companies. Also, we have access to some of the best experts in in the field. Some of the folks have been doing this for 34 years and literally developed the cutting edge technology that we're all using today. So having access to those people to learn from one-on-one on a daily basis is pretty huge. You can't get that in a lot of places unless you go to a place like Lockheed Martin. And then there’s the overall environment. Everybody's looking to strive to do their best. Everybody's super friendly. We’re pushed to work together and really just build the best product. Q: What do you love about your job? A: There are several things I love about my job. First, as an engineer, there’s having a solid technical challenge to tackle every single day. That has value not just to me because of its complexity, but it has value to the nation overall. It is satisfying and humbling to have something that's truly difficult, something that's kind of new to work on. That's relatively nuanced--I wouldn't say like a niche, technical challenge, but something that you really, really have to have a strong knack to come up with really good solutions. And then knowing that whatever you figure out as an individual will help benefit your team because you're also working on things as a team. And then it kind of flows up to where what you're doing today doesn't just affect you or your team, it can actually affect the entire nation in national security, which is really humbling because our work is really a lot more than just who we are and what we do from day to day. Then, again, being able to work with the leading technical experts in the field, working on things that you can't read about in textbooks because they're just so specialized and advanced at the same time, because they're not designed to be manufactured off like a major production line to be really cheap. These are pieces of equipment that are literally designed to be the best and optimized for a very refined environment. So it's a unique opportunity to be able to learn from the best of everything. You get to grow in your mental acuity, learn tribal processes that someone spent 30 years learning directly from another person. Also, you get all of the work life balance. You can take the time off if you need to and are given plenty of vacation time. And the flexible schedule allows me to be able to travel, go camping on weekends, and do cycling events. I'm not always constrained to a set schedule every single week. But I do, of course, accomplish my work which is really nice. Q: What's it like working in the cyber field at Lockheed Martin? A: I'm learning more and more information every day as we come up with new developments and as we come up with new missions. To compare what I've learned working in aeronautics, in the RMS cyber field you're not necessarily working on an actual physical product you can see that keeps everybody safe every single day. But what we work on and develop is just as important, if not more important, than say, an F-35. We can see an F-35, we can physically touch it, we know it's there. We can hear it. It's a full-on sensory perceptive experience. But there are cyber systems for communications and everything else, too. So where you know the F-35 is a physical product, cyber ties everything together to keep everything in communication that helps take it to the next level. Q: What does digital safety mean to you? A: Digital safety by today's definition is the safety and security that keeps not only a digitized version of myself or yourself safe, but all designs and data related to a digital DNA safe. Now digital DNA is kind of like what makes up a person's online identity or all the data that makes up an aircraft or whatever else’s identity. This ties into safeguards that are put in place to protect that information, and for the ability or the inability of others to compromise it. The safeguards are aided by consistent and critical practices of protecting the information and access to it by everyone involved. Lastly, this also requires careful mitigation techniques that focus on mitigating the potential risk of an adverse event versus cumbersome practice which can be counterproductive. Digital safety is essentially doing everything that we can to prevent adversaries from compromising any of our information--whether it be about us, personal identifying information such as credit cards--to actual critical information like specific lines of code that do something very special for some kind of mission. We have to be able to prevent our adversaries from acquiring that information and keep our info safe while not being overly cumbersome in the way we safeguard that data. Q: What’s your advice for how can someone stay safe online? A: Stay vigilant. Try to use different passwords for different sites. It can be very annoying, but it will pay off in the end. Also, don't save your personal information to a device, computer, phone or anything like that. Because it's all stored on a computer and if that computer is ever compromised, there's even more data that can be compromised or obtained by an adversary than they would have initially been able to get away with. Also, it's best to remain observant because most of your threats are honestly visible. And you have to be careful who you're sending your information to. Be careful what you release to other parties because any enough information that might seem innocent when compiled in the in the right way can be compromising. Q: With technology evolving at such a high rate, how do we stay ahead of future cyber threats? A: This is sort of like a chicken or the egg situation, right? What actually comes first? Lockheed Martin is really a leader in technological development in this area. We get a first-hand opportunity to learn all the new critical information as it's actually being discovered or developed. Then, of course, the proliferation or sharing of that information within our organizational enterprise helps us stay ahead of the curve, because we can develop mitigation techniques to reduce risk before adversaries are even aware of what we've learned. Q: Who has been your mentor on your cyber journey, and how are you mentoring others? A: When I first started in Palmdale, working in aeronautics, I originally signed up with a couple of different mentors who were across the enterprise, working in Palmdale, Fort Worth, and Orlando. I tried to learn from the experts in the technical field that I was supporting. And then once I learned well enough, I began mentoring others. I also volunteer at local high schools whenever there's any type of a engineering competition and help show them what engineers do on a regular basis. So I've been able to develop these relationships in a variety different ways. Also, I'm still kind of learning the exact boundaries of my current technical role, and it's actually pretty broad. But for my mentors, I have, of course, coworkers and peers, I have a couple of different managers, and I have a couple different technical experts on the government side. So I'm kind of building up a repertoire of different mentors and mentees that I can actually touch base with to learn as much as I can.
Briana Lassiter
Engineering Leadership Development Program Graduate
Q: How did you get involved in cybersecurity? A: I took networking classes in high school, studied cyber forensics, and started my career off in software systems engineering business development. Q: How has cyber technology changed during your career? A: Cyber technology is always changing because there are always new products being produced which leads to new ways of hacking and cyber has to be able to keep up with the threats. Q: Tell us about your most memorable/interesting technology project (so far). A: My most memorable/interesting technology project I've been able to work on has been working with submarines. I was able to participate in a rotation for combat ships by installing anti-submarine warfare on one of the ships. I got to visit the ship, add capabilities depending on its use and participated in systems designs, drawings and government reviews. Q: Why do you think Lockheed Martin is a leader in digital safety? A: I think Lockheed Martin is a leader in digital safety because of our duty to protect the products and supply to our customers. As a corporation, we have the ability to protect proprietary information on both sides. Q: Why is Lockheed Martin a great place to work? A: Lockheed Martin is a great place to work because they give you the opportunity to find the best career path for you. They provide flexibility in roles you can attain, ability to make your own path, and pivot depending on your interests at that time. Q: What’s it like working at Lockheed Martin? A: I enjoy working at Lockheed Martin. With the adoption of the 4/10 flexible schedule it gives me the ability to balance work and life to take care of the things I need to. Work will always be there but having the ability to take care of other things is important to me. They also put volunteerism and giving back to the community at the forefront of their values.
Sean Considine
Program Management Manager
Q: What’s next for cyber defense? A: We're going to get smarter because adversaries are getting smarter. With digital transformation and Machine Learning on the rise, cyber defense will be computer/AI vs computer/AI and not people behind the computers combating these attacks. Q: How has technology to address cyber threats changed during your career? A: In the beginning, chatrooms were popular and it was important to know that the people you talked to were who they said they were. Now, we have more protection like firewalls and virus scanners and we're able to do our own research to stay safe. Q: How did you get involved in cybersecurity? A: They found me. I never applied to any of my jobs, I was always recruited. Out of college, I was recruited as a Government Civilian and then I posted my resume on ClearedJobs and Lockheed Martin recruited me. Q: Who has been your mentor on your cyber journey, and how are you mentoring others? A: My mentor who had the biggest influence was Peter Wisner. Something stood out to him on my resume that drew him to work with me. Even though he is far along in his career, he still has the curiosity of a junior level worker. Being curious and eager to learn helps you keep up to the date with the latest in tech and agility. I have learned not to get bottlenecked by being open to new ideas. I try to lead by example technologically and leadership-wise. You can't be afraid to fail. In school, I remember our teacher assigned us this project with no instructions and we all failed, but next time we were given the assignment, we knew what to do. It is important to fail in order to learn. Q: What role do diversity and inclusion have in cybersecurity? A: Diversity and inclusion have a huge role in cybersecurity. It isn't only about system hardening, but finding new ways to keep them out. People who come from different upbringings and backgrounds have different ideas to approaching problems by looking at them from every angle. With new adversaries comes new threats, and being able to approach these problems from different angles makes us better equipped to manage these attacks. Q: What’s it like working in the cyber field at Lockheed Martin? A: It's a fun adventure because you never know what's going to happen. There will always be the mundane, but you also get to work on new projects with new people which gives a lot of opportunities to learn. Let my 10 years of working here speak for itself, most people usually jump around, but I have stayed. Q: Why is Lockheed Martin a great place to work? A: There's a reason why when Marvel made Iron Man, they based it off of us--we're cool. We have Skunk Works and F-35s and you can say "my company did that." It's a cool place to work on the cutting edge of technology and not many companies are associated with as much as we are. Our rich history from working in WW2 and the space program makes us unique. Q: How does Lockheed Martin’s approach translate to innovative leadership in the cyber industry? A: From the first day you start, they're all about development which isn't typical. They recognize there are many different paths that will work for different people. They use informal and formal training to develop leaders in different ways.
