Neumann Lim

Director of Digital Forensics and Incident Response at ISA Cybersecurity

"Cybersecurity itself is a very interesting field and, as we all know, it's also a very wide field. That’s one of things that makes ISA a fantastic company for me. It offers many, many services that cover almost every cybersecurity discipline. So, for me, this is an interesting part of my journey because I'm not just dealing with one specific field. The company allows me to take a look at all of the different aspects of cybersecurity. If you look at my employment history, you'll see that I started out with a background in programming. Then I went into hardware engineering at one point, working with networking devices, and then I moved into the digital forensics field. It really is, like you said, a journey. As I have transitioned into this director role, I have been able to broaden my skill set. I think to be a successful incident responder, you need to have knowledge in a lot of different parts of cybersecurity, to be able to know what is normal, and to know when things are bad."

"Yes, the cyber imagery of the shadowy hacker is scary, but it's very Hollywood. You have to understand that from our own research and from real world experience, we know that the APTs [advanced persistent threat actors] and the criminal groups are very much like us. They wear suits. They drive fancy cars. That hoodie – if they do wear one – is only because it's convenient and comfortable. I think it’s important to debunk that lone wolf Hollywood imagery, because I want to help people understand that we're up against like-minded professionals in our field. It is an adversarial game. It is us versus them. They have probably similar backgrounds, similar education as us. A lot of the APT groups that we deal with have members with degrees in computer science from national universities from wherever they're from. So, like I said, it's an adversarial game: they're knowledgeable; we’re knowledgeable – they attack us; we defend against them."