Tanya Janca on cyber mentorship, “shifting left” and punk rock

Application security maven Tanya Janca – AKA SheHacksPurple – is an accomplished author, pentester and onetime music festival organizer. But she’s perhaps best known as the founder of We Hack Purple, a community of security professionals dedicated to sharing useful cyber information including coding trainings and coursework. (Dynamic application security testing Bright Security acquired We Hack Purple earlier this year, bringing its own approach to the “shift left” dilemma of moving cybersecurity earlier in the software development cycle.)

Tanya has spent much of her career in cybersecurity and IT empowering others to strengthen their own skills. With We Hack Purple, she built a community from the ground up, and she’s organized plenty of security talks and capture-the-flag tournaments along the way. Computer science can be a nebulous, wide-ranging field – Tanya has further helped people zero in on what they should focus on learning in the wide world of cybersecurity.

Tune into the episode to hear more on:

• The story behind Tanya’s bestselling book, “Alice and Bob Learn Application Security”
• The qualities that make a good pentester: “You have to be very determined and detail oriented,” as Tanya put it
• #cybermentoringmonday and the value of professional mentorship