Monique Parker Podcast Transcript
Monique Parker joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast.
[00:00:12] Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Monique Parker. Monique Parker is a cybersecurity systems analyst at Infinite Technologies. She works across several technical and functional areas including cybersecurity, user administration, and workload tracking and management. She is certified as a CISSP, CCSP, SSCP, and recently graduated from Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia with an MBA degree.
Well, good afternoon, Monique. Welcome to the show.
[00:00:42] Monique Parker: Thank you so much for having me, Brian. And good afternoon to you as well.
[00:00:46] Brian Thomas: Absolutely. Love this, Monique. Great to meet you today. Getting someone new every day on the podcast here, getting to hear their stories. Just something really special to me. So, thank you again. And Monique, we’re going to jump right into your questions here. You’ve got quite a career in technology and security, and you’re currently a cyber security systems analyst at Infinite Technologies. Could you share with our audience the secret to your career growth and what inspires you?
[00:01:13] Monique Parker: That is a great question. I actually went to college, and I majored in information technology. Following up with my bachelor’s, I attended tech school and I’m currently certified as a Cisco Network Specialist. So I’ve always been interested in technology, and it feels like I went to school a hundred years ago.
And so much has changed in the realm of technology. A lot of the passion I have was actually fostered here at Infinite Technologies. Initially, when I came to the organization, I started off as help desk, and it’s funny because I had a bachelor’s in I. T. I had certified as a Cisco Network Specialist, but you know, you got to start somewhere to get ahead.
And, once I came to this company, since I started here back in 2013, the company has really fostered, a passion for cyber security for working across multiple platforms just doing so many different things in the realm of infrastructure program management just a wealth of opportunity within this organization to grow, and the organization has actually helped me receive a lot of the certifications that I have today.
[00:02:26] Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. And everybody’s got to start somewhere. We all have had that opportunity. And again, saying yes to a lot of opportunities will actually put you in the front seat and sometimes right in the driver’s seat. So, I really do appreciate your story. And this is certainly a success story that we can brag about and share with our audience.
Monique, your company offers a variety of IT services for the public sector, and I imagine there are rigid security standards that come along with what you do, obviously. Is there a particular service when it comes to cybersecurity that your clients need the most today, and do you see that shifting in the future?
[00:03:01] Monique Parker: Today, a lot is just in flux with AI and various methods of automation. A big thing they talk about a SOAR, which is security orchestration, automation and recovery. There’s always been a huge push in security to Use the tools in order to help secure your systems create defense and depth and, here at Infinite Technologies that’s what we do. We pride ourselves on a lot of our program management tools.
We’ve saved our customers millions of dollars through the use of our tools and by utilizing our services and, where we’ve really been successful in cyber security is certification and accreditation. As you may know, most systems have to go through a rigorous certification process, whether you want to add it to the app store, or if you’re trying to, run a platform on the Government Air Force network.
So that certification and accreditation, ensuring that you’re meeting RMF controls, NIST controls just those types of things are where our bread and butter is. We’re very good at continuous monitoring. We’re very good at vulnerability management. Just a lot of those areas, we really, really excel, and it comes through in our work and in our diligence, for providing to our customers.
[00:04:17] Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. And there are a lot of, requirements in the public sector, there’s a lot of different certifications, including FedRAMP, if you’re working with the federal government and the military. So I appreciate you highlighting some of those, and that helps us understand a little bit better what you do as far as your company and supporting the public sector.
Monique, what has been the biggest challenge for you when it comes to tackling security events within the public sector?
[00:04:42] Monique Parker: The biggest challenge is that, honestly, my favorite days working on the job are when nothing happens, and yes, you do get those days where it’s quiet, you can focus on other projects, but more likely than not, you usually got some irons in the fire.
Some of the big challenges are getting people to understand that, security is not necessarily just on your security manager or your information system security officer or, your cyber security team.
Security is everyone’s responsibility from the VP of Operations to the administrative assistant. Everyone has a role to play in securing the infrastructure and securing your organization’s assets. With our company, we really hammer home annual security training. It’s required and our field security staff.
Or rather our facility security staff will not let you go without ensuring that you have taken all required security training annually, whether it’s on the commercial side or on the government side, because, people are your biggest resource. And, with all the talk about AI and how everything’s so focused about getting the computers to do it, no matter how far we progress in that space and with automation, we will always have people at the root and at the center of our progress.
So people are so important. People are so critical and without people, organizations don’t exist.
[00:06:11] Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. Thank you for highlighting that. And you’re absolutely right. Getting everybody trained across the organization with that security awareness training is so, so important.
And believe it or not, a lot of those incidents come through an employee that’s getting phished or not really familiar with some of the latest social engineering tactics that these bad guys are using. Right. So, I appreciate the share on that. Monique, last question of the day, you’re obviously leveraging some of that new and emerging technologies at your company. Is there anything specific you might be able to highlight or share with us today?
[00:06:43] Monique Parker: Yeah, within our organization we’re actually creating products geared for government use, but also, we’ve got some really neat commercial products out there. We’re working on a sports app and within our flagship facility in Virginia, we’ve actually built it out to complement that application.
So it’s really interesting. We’re just doing a lot of great stuff. In the sports app space, but also, we’re doing due diligence of the program management products that we offer are, used across several different areas in the Air Force and Air National Guard.
And so, we’re just really pleased with the outcomes that we can. provide for our customers through the use of our products. And we really pride ourselves on our service. Our service is, we are the type of organization that, if you have a problem this morning, we’ll have it fixed by later this evening.
And our turnaround and responsiveness are really incredible. So being able to do that is, is an honor for me. And, within our organization, we all strive for perfection.
[00:07:50] Brian Thomas: Thank you. And that means a lot, obviously, to your customers that you care enough to be always looking ahead to stay a step ahead of the nefarious actors out there.
Monique, I do appreciate that. Monique, it was such a pleasure having you on today, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
[00:08:07] Monique Parker: Thank you so much, Brian. I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. For your listeners out there, you guys check us out at InfiniteTech.com. I’ve actually got some blogs out there myself.
Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and link up with us on LinkedIn because we are definitely hiring. Thank you so much.
[00:08:26] Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Monique Parker Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
