#0208: (WIS) From Rocks to Risk: How Curiosity Built a Security Career — Jessica Cannon on the SheSecures Podcast

Jessica Cannon, Information Security Manager at Mintz in Boston, joined host Heather Morrow for the ILTA Women and Security Committee's She Secures podcast. Jessica's unconventional path, from geology to web development to cybersecurity, is the throughline of the conversation.

She explains that her scientific instincts around pattern recognition are what ultimately drove her toward security work. In her current role at Mintz, no two days look alike: she might be collaborating with an AI innovation team in the morning and doing detection engineering by afternoon.

When discussing her career milestones, Jessica highlights two pivotal moments: being tapped to lead a security team at AspenTech after years of quietly excelling at side projects, and then making the bold decision to leave a comfortable 13-year tenure to bring her skills to a new environment, the law firm world at Mintz.

She speaks candidly about the challenges of communicating risk to highly intelligent non-technical professionals, and warns that AI is rapidly weaponizing vulnerabilities that organizations had long deprioritized. Her advice: get the fundamentals right first.

Jessica closes with an inspiring personal anecdote, how a stinging performance review drove her to enroll in a digital forensics course out of spite, eventually leading her to nearly complete a full master's degree in cybersecurity. Her message to women looking to grow: stay curious, channel your frustration productively, and never stop stitching your experiences together.