Critical thinking and problem solving have been two themes throughout my career prior to classifying them as particular skills that I possessed for any type of resume or portfolio. As a Program Manager in the Navy at the command level, you had to triple check written content, execute when lives are on the line as a leader and aircraft maintainer, and ensure compliance between moving parts as a leader and quality assurance representative. At ODU I was able to take classes that taught me about interdisciplinary research, allowing me to place a name to what I had been doing all along. If you want to tackle hard problems, you have to look at them from different angles and disciplinary lenses simultaneously. Cyber GRC allows you to think that way with risk assessments, control frameworks, and compliance gap analyses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wrote this paper arguing how much autonomy artificial intelligence should have when assisting ethical hackers with penetration tests. By studying computer science, ethics, and psychology all at the same time, I was able to craft my answer: I developed a theory I named Collaborative AI-Augmented Ethical Hacking, a layered model that scales the autonomy of the AI to the sensitivity of the environment it\u2019s testing. My research in computer science taught me what\u2019s possible with AI tools. Ethics made me consider who\u2019s responsible when a machine automates a high stakes decision. Psychology taught me that over-dependence on automation can silently degrade human decision making. Each individual field would not have led me to that conclusion on its own. The same happens in GRC. It\u2019s that intersection of disciplines that will take you from checking a box to actually managing risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n