IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2014 - 38

BY
LESLIE PRIVES

The Dynamic World
of Cybersecurity

MCMAHON AND
LOCKHEED OFFER
NEW SOLUTIONS

L

Like a true engineer, Chandra McMahon has a formula for her
career path: every time she takes on a new job, she examines the
role to see if it will require 65% of her skills and offer 35% learning
opportunity. "Doing this has resulted in my being able to stretch
myself and take on roles where I thought I might not be capable,"
she explains. "It's enabled me to build my skills and keep growing."
As the vice president of Commercial Markets in the Information Systems and Global Solutions (IS&GS) division for Lockheed
Martin Corporation, McMahon has not only led numerous successful initiatives that landed her in her current prominent position,
but she's found a workstream that mirrors her
own personal growth philosophy. Lockheed Martin, a well-known global firm
headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland,
is predominately thought of as an
aerospace and defense company but is
stretching its own skills into the cybersecurity solutions marketplace, which
is where McMahon's responsibilities lie.
The extension is a logical one though,
as McMahon points out. "We have incredChandra McMahon
ible strength in cybersecurity because
we've had to do it for military defense organizations and even our
own network, which is one of the most attacked networks because
of the work we do," she says. "What we're looking to do and what
we have been doing is taking the capabilities we've developed to
protect ourselves and our government customers and offering
these solutions to other critical information services companies."
Having previously served as Lockheed Martin's chief information security officer (CISO), McMahon understands firsthand the
need for cybersecurity. Yet, her passion for the field is not limited to her own work product, as she actively encourages college
students to consider careers in cyber. "It's a really dynamic field
because of how threats and technology change. With every enableDigital Object Identifier 10.1109/MWIE.2014.2353295
Date of publication: 7 November 2014

38

IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE

DECEMBER 2014

ment of the Internet comes the creation of vulnerabilities that can
be exploited," she says. "The demand for skills in this area is outpacing the supply, and there's a need for talented people to come
into this profession across all industries." Cyber challenges at the
high school and college levels can offer students an opportunity to
explore the field and for those who are planning to pursue other
fields, minor degrees or certifications in cyber or privacy fields exist
and serve as strong additional credentials on a resume.
McMahon did not set out intending to work in cybersecurity,
although she did identify an aptitude for math and science at an
early age. During a high school summer, she attended a week-long
seminar for women in science and engineering at Carnegie Mellon
University. "Over the course of that program I was exposed to a
number of different disciplines and at the end of the week, I knew
I'd be an engineer," she recalls. "I wasn't sure what type yet but just
knew I wanted to do something in engineering." After graduation,
McMahon went to college at Virginia Tech, where she could take
general courses in her first year before deciding on a discipline,
ultimately settling on industrial engineering and operations research.
From there, she took her first job
with General Electric Aerospace, as a
mission operations analyst working
at a satellite ground station. "Since
then, I've had a significant number of
roles doing wildly different things but
all around IT technology," says McMahon. "I've worked in applications testing, on a missions operations floor for
ground systems, in project engineering, and in other capacities, dealing
with applications development and
testing of large IT systems."
McMahon even took a break from the
defense industry, working at a small life
sciences company for six years. Bringing
project management and IT experience,

1942-065X/14©2014IEEE



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2014

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