Marlyn Harris is a cybersecurity expert. She’s also a nurse. And a veteran who served in the gulf war. Her mix of experiences is perfect for cybersecurity projects, she says.

Marylyn Harris was deployed in the Gulf war and honorably discharged from the U.S. Army in 1992, and pursued a Master’s degree in psychiatric mental health nursing. After working as a sales rep for pharmaceutical companies she dove into healthcare IT and has been immersed in the cybersecurity space for the last few years.

As a veteran, she can reflect very well and understand the current mental health struggles many people are going through due to the pandemic. In her opinion, societies have a lot to do to address mental health appropriately, through offering support and a more normalized approach to discussing mental health. “I did not know that some things from the war were lingering inside of me and bothering me. It was 10 years later when I met a wonderful clinician, a psychologist at a community mental health clinic, and she told me: “You have post-traumatic stress disorder from your work experience.” And I said, no, that's not me. And I was a mental health professional! I was so used to pushing on, driving forward, without taking a mental health break. There was no such thing as a mental health break, and I can bring that mindset to the present. The stress levels in the homes, the creeping mental illness that is around the corner, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress. These things are still in society but we don't call it out,” says Marylyn Harris, and continues that we should be mindful of the need for empathy globally. “I don't think we're doing a good job of letting people express that they're not okay. And I wouldn't expect anybody to be okay right now with what we've been through since March of 2020, all around the world. If you're not having a crisis, somebody else's country is. And I think you should have empathy for those people because in two months it can be you.”

From war, nursing in mental health to healthcare IT and cybersecurity

After war Marylyn worked in the emergency room, then in psychiatric mental health nursing in the community after obtaining a Master’s degree. She was then recruited as a pharmaceutical representative before going through some healthcare IT courses. A few years ago she started focusing on cybersecurity.

“Nurses are valuable to any team because we understand people. We understand health. I understand mental health. With my military experience, I was very versed in keeping people's secrets. I was versed in securing problems, equipment and keeping people safe. I was used to being in a male-dominated environment. So cybersecurity doesn't intimidate me by there being more men and women are growing in the field,” says Marylyn Harris.

To a large extent, cybersecurity is a group effort: it demands awareness about safety and enacting measures to meet safety criteria. As a veteran, she knows about defense, as a nurse, she knows a lot about people and how they work. And that’s a winning combination. 

Sometimes security threats don’t even happen due to malice. As mentioned by Stephanie Domas in a TED talk from 2016, a medical device can be hacked due to lack of carefulness. A procedure can be interrupted due to an antivirus program. This is where ethical hackers play a role, by working with manufacturers of medical devices and software to hack them and discover their vulnerabilities, before the clinical use, where malicious hackers could do so.

As a general recommendation, Marylyn advises everyone to educate themselves, and there are a lot of useful resources available on the internet. “Cybersecurity is everyone's responsibility. It's yours, it's mine. There are certain things one can do: create a secure password or a passphrase. It should be at least over 12 characters. It shouldn't be something a name or your child's name or. Use two factor authentication. Hackers are going to go for the lowest hanging fruit. Perhaps the most important thing: if there's no one to train you on how to keep your home, your job or your personal network, your personal phone safe, train yourself. Train yourself for your own business benefit and your family's benefit.”

Tune in for the full episode:

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In this episode, Marylyn talks about: 

• How does it feel to work in a war and the consequences a deployment has on an individual’s mental health,

• How can we as a society improve attitude towards mental health and coping

• Why are nurses perfect cybersecurity experts,

• What are the basic cybersecurity practices everyone should know?