For the first edition of AiSP’s 'Ladies Talk Cyber’ series, we interviewed Sherin Y Lee, a specialist in one of Asia’s largest pure-play cybersecurity services firm about her perceptions of the industry and how we can encourage more women to enter the field. Sherin was the founder for AiSP’s Ladies in Cyber Charter launched in November 2018, and is currently serving in AiSP’s Executive Committee as Vice President.

How to be successful in cybersecurity field

In celebration of SG Women year, AiSP’s secretariat decided it was timely to launch a series of interviews of female leaders across industries who fulfil high impact roles, and learn about their journeys, experiences and insights

The initiative aims to shed some light on what it takes to make it in this field. The interviews can be source of invaluable career insights as well as opportunities for those in the field to get a deeper understanding of the industry, and how its leaders are innovating to disrupt the cyber landscape.

Introducing women with a deep interest in cybersecurity

In our first edition, we sit down with Sherin, a marketing specialist from a Singapore headquartered pure-play cybersecurity services firm serving enterprises in Asia.

Sherin is the Asia Pacific Head of Marketing, Brand and Communications for one of Asia’s largest pure-play end-to-end cybersecurity service providers. As a Marketing Director, Sherin is passionate about bringing to market new cyber technologies and knowledge that can help solve problems in today’s digital economy. She currently spearheads cybersecurity brand marketing initiatives aimed at capturing the audiences' imagination to achieve brand differentiation, as well as measurable results, for the company’s cyber security services.

What brought you to the cybersecurity industry?

Quite by chance, I began working in Infocomm technology marketing at a local telco several years ago. At that time, cyber marketing was just one of my many portfolios — I was handling segment marketing for B2B services such as SaaS, data centres, cloud among others. After learning about different technologies’ spaces, I got curious about how cybersecurity plays a role in all these different areas. There weren’t many people who could answer my questions then, so to satisfy my curiosity, I started volunteering in various cyber-related associations. With that, I got to attend seminars and expand my cyber knowledge, as well as meet more industry professionals from the different areas of cybersecurity.

I have always considered myself a marketing professional. What drew me to take the job was not only it was in cybersecurity, but rather the type of projects I could be involved in. And now that I’m in it, all I can say is, I find it incredibly interesting and meaningful.

The cybersecurity landscape is constantly evolving, and as organisations digitally transform their operations, a huge amount of problems arises. Many of these firms are willing to invest in people to give them solutions. These people are in a league of their own, and it’s great to be working alongside such brilliant minds. I learn a lot from them. More than that, it’s also reassuring to be working with a company that provides opportunities to further your education and development.

What were your defining moments in this industry, and factors or guidance that helped you achieve them?

I believe it’s incredibly important to have mentors and coaches. Many assume this should be provided by your line manager, however some of the best mentors I've had have been individuals across organisations, in addition to my line managers. And a number of them came from my volunteering days.

Success is not achieved in isolation, and I believe the teams I have worked with at work, as well as in my volunteering have been instrumental in helping me get to where I am now. They bring a host of ideas and differing perspectives to overcome obstacles. There is always a lot to learn from people around you.

Having a positive mindset has been essential. Having ambition, loving what you do, being open to change and opportunity as well as being adaptable have been key for me. For example, as technology evolves, there’s a need to continuously learn, stay up-to-date, and even make predictions ahead of the latest developments.

What is it that you love most about your role?

You can do marketing for any firm, for any service. But there’s a big difference between marketing day-to-day consumer goods, vs a topic like cybersecurity. Crimes of today are cross-border. The typical espionage, criminality and the like have morphed to cyber-espionage, cyber criminality and so on. Having the opportunity to contribute in the fight against such things makes my work a lot more meaningful.

There’s a lot of pride in working for a firm that only focuses on doing cyber well. The company’s responsibility ranges from helping C-suites identify their cyber strategies and gaps, to designing and building complex secure-by-design infrastructures, up to being there for clients for incident response. It’s these things that can help organisations take a pro-active stance in their cyber defence strategies. Being able to contribute to that is fulfilling.

The marketing we do requires that we work with experts who share and present ideas to board members and industry leaders, being able to influence decisions based on what we can learn from incidents and what we can improve. These make our work constantly rewarding, and because things are moving so fast, there’s always something to learn. Every day is a new day.

Prominent Cybersecurity trends:

What are some of the trends you have seen in the market lately, and what do you think will emerge in the future?

Staff’s awareness of technology and cyber risks has been on the rise—from those within the business to shareholders and board level—most probably due the recent and big cyber incidents that we’ve seen. They realise that its everyone’s responsibility to recognise a threat when they see one. Therefore, there has been a greater shift and more importance placed on protecting organisations against these risks. But this is just the beginning. My marketing team has a strong role to play in driving this education via the content that we release.

The sophistication and skills of attackers are growing by the minute. Previously, there were only single individuals, but now we’re seeing more organised cybercrime groups, and even state-sponsored entities, getting the spotlight. To defend against their more advanced attacks, organisations will need to consistently develop their skills.

The more complex an organisation’s technology ecosystem is (with IoT, machine learning, chat-bots, data lakes, block-chain to name but a few), the more challenging it becomes to address both inherent and new risks. Moreover, as organisations acquire more technology and use data for business growth, there needs to be greater regulatory scrutiny and oversight on the exposure of their customer information. This requires them to place greater importance on compliance. But as different geographical locations impose varying set of compliance requirements, addressing them can be challenging.

Females in Cyber Security

What can we do to encourage more women to join the cybersecurity sector?

As an industry we need to continue working on education, awareness, industry perception, providing support and preventing barriers for entry.

In particular, to pass on key messages :

Don’t be scared and to be willing to take on challenges.


Find mentors and coaches who will help you come up with ideas on how to navigate the industry.


Join associations like AiSP, ISACA, ISC2, attend their seminars and meet-ups, and read books to understand and learn from other practitioners. I’m very thankful to have mentors, both male and female, who have provided me guidance, answered my questions and pointed me in the right direction over the years.


Have the willingness to continuously learn. This sector is constantly evolving. Every day there is a challenge and opportunity to learn something new. If you are naturally curious and willing to think unconventionally, this would be a great career move.

Final thoughts

How can you debunk the myth that cybersecurity is only for men? Is there any indication this stereotyping is changing?

I believe there is still more to be done despite the advancements towards creating more diversity within cybersecurity and the tech industry. It’s not easy, but my female cyber peers are actively pursuing this goal.

The Ladies in Cyber Charter is very close to my heart – I founded this charter because I believe in the importance of having access to women working and leading in senior leadership in their chosen fields. These women form the backbone of confidence to future CEOs and CISOs of tomorrow.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about highlighting women because they are women. What we really want to do here is to highlight the good work produced by women in cyber. We’ve seen women build their companies, create products, stand out in deep research, and even become trusted cyber advisors on strategy. It’s about the talent, skills and accomplishments, not gender.

It’s only when we have a strong network of support, and do enough in highlighting the amazing work produced by women in cyber, that we will get there. We’ve only just started, and it is my sincere hope that more women will join us in this meaningful cause.

We are only as limited in our outreach to students, as the number of women who sign up as mentors.