Journalists, lawyers or philologists are wanted to work in cybersecurity

María Martínez, head of the Threats Intelligence Operations team at Telefónica Tech, gets up every morning ready to catch the bad guys that swarm the Internet.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
18 July 2022 Monday 21:52
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Journalists, lawyers or philologists are wanted to work in cybersecurity

María Martínez, head of the Threats Intelligence Operations team at Telefónica Tech, gets up every morning ready to catch the bad guys that swarm the Internet. Her job is, among other things, to track down cybercriminals responsible for phishing. To understand us: those who supplant an email from the bank written in a caveman Castilian informing you that your account has been canceled and that you have to reactivate it through a suspicious link. Or those who create false profiles on social networks to deceive the unwary.

As a child, Maria wanted to be a pediatrician or a marine biologist. But in the end she opted for telecommunications engineering. She entered Telefónica 14 years ago with a scholarship. She moved from working on issues related to telepresence to the company's cybersecurity team. She today directs the team of fifty professionals dedicated to combating cyberthreats and ensuring digital security from Telefónica Tech's Digital Operations Center (DOC).

“It's a super interesting world. And quite everyday, because they are things that can happen to anyone in our day to day. We detect phishing campaigns, those that collect user data and then use it to commit bank fraud. Or simply to steal their credentials,” she explains. Because in this highly digitized world, having your social network profile, email passwords or bank credentials stolen is almost as if half your life had been kidnapped. Not to mention the damage that a cybercriminal who gets hold of our password to operate can do to our checking account.

In the DOC he is always two steps ahead of the digital pirates, to anticipate their misdeeds. Thus, false domains or profiles are tracked, searches are carried out on the dark web and smear campaigns are stopped in the digital environment. The DOC handles 350,000 tickets and some 500,000 alerts per year. Of that half a million, 13,000 are critical, that is, they imply a serious risk of cyberattack with irreparable consequences against essential systems or infrastructure. That is why human profiles with different skills and highly qualified are needed. All precaution is little when it comes to identifying possible security threats at a point in the network and transforming them into an efficient prevention action.

The Digital Operations Center or DOC for those who work there at Telefónica Tech has 1,500 professionals distributed throughout Spain and in another 13 operating centers in Latin America and Europe. It is not for less: every day they check the status of their services in all the countries where Telefónica has a footprint: Spain, Brazil, Chile, Peru and the United States. It is a pioneering center in Spain, the first of its kind to offer integrated cybersecurity, cloud, IoT (Internet of Things), communications and workplace services (remote and on premise, housing staff dedicated to clients).

Cybercrime constantly manages to act. At DOC they know this and their teams are constantly training to stay one step ahead. The 'cybercacos' take advantage of the technical vulnerabilities of the computer systems, but many times it is the human vulnerabilities that open the doors for them to commit their misdeeds. María Martínez's team provides precisely the human component, which is key to locating them and preventing them from roaming freely. Because in cybercrimes there are not only zeros and ones. The information must be contextualized, and that is the added value of the DOC. Hence, this team is multidisciplinary, diverse and multicultural. And a fact that cannot be overlooked: more than a third are women. “This cybersecurity thing is a genderless profession,” she exclaims.

Cybersecurity also has no nationality. Spanish is spoken there as well as English, German or Arabic. “And there are many professional profiles, not just engineers. We have political scientists, journalists, lawyers, philologists... We speak more than nine languages ​​within the team because there are many nationalities!”, declares Martínez. In fact, they are always looking for and capturing new profiles: every year Telefónica Tech's cybersecurity area launches scholarships to attract talent from any career, be it science or letters. In addition, the team is constantly growing with new hires joining the workforce to expand and improve the service, adding highly qualified professionals with heterogeneous training.

If women are 50% of the population, it makes no sense that when choosing a profession they think that technological or engineering careers are not for them. Maria herself is an ambassador of

It is true that little by little the saying that 'science is a man's thing' is being forgotten. In fact, María is a benchmark in her sector, but she is convinced that there must be many more “marias”. “In our sector we have a ‘problem’: when they reach adolescence, girls lose interest in technology. In part, because they do not have referents in which to see themselves reflected, ”she points out. Her statistics prove her right: at 11 years old, many girls are attracted to science, technology or mathematics. When they turn 15, however, they lose interest. The consequence is that, today, STEM disciplines continue to have a majority presence of men. And it is time for that to change.

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