 There's one of those interesting times where we got two talks actually, two talks in one hour, but this next talk we were like Remember I'm reviewing the CRPs like this is a talk that we really want to bring in. It's something that is actually not discussed discussed often enough and Megan Rodie is here. Is it Rodie? Rodie, so Megan is going to be talking about neurodiversity in Setcoff teams And this is you know one of the things that's a nice thing about the packet hacking village is we can have many different conversations Yeah, it doesn't have to align with any of the track any certain tracks, but It's something that's you know, these are the issues that we can't need deeper conversations with and as now my pleasure to introduce you all Megan Rodie Thank you So as Ming said, I'm gonna be talking about how to strengthen your Setcoff team by welcoming neurodiversity into the mix specifically I'm gonna talk about my experience over the past year working in Setcoff's with Asperger syndrome and how I benefit my team through the the special bait brain chemistry I have with high functioning autism and also how my managers work with me And certain difficulties I face in my day-to-day So today I'm gonna talk about a group of people who are highly productive Have extreme attention to detail our logical Calculated passionate about the work they do and are hyper focused which are all skills that Come greatly as a great asset to Setcoff's teams this group of people are High functioning autistics So right now there's a lack of neurodiversity and high functioning autistics in the general workforce not even specifically Setcoff's or IT Research has found that only 15% of people with autism in the UK are employed full-time There's no stats for the USA yet. I'm guessing it's similar, but um In reality a lot of these people could be working. They just haven't been giving the chance And they should because they can add valuable skills to your teams So then we ask why why are these individuals not working when they could be really succeeding in certain fields and so to begin with Due to social disabilities these individuals often do not Interview well due to lack of social skills Communication skills and so that's a quick cutoff for them when they're interviewing there's also a stigma surrounding autism and typically interviewers or anyone who when you think about autism you're thinking about the disabilities and difficulties of those individuals and is rarely rarely talked about the Abilities that come with having a different mindset and being able to work with that And my last point that I think is why we're often overlooked is because we behave uniquely So some of the things that I do that would often turn people away from considering me for a job or Being a friend even I typically talk very loudly I am often told to use my indoor voice like a five-year-old so that's one thing I realize I I Understand I do it in general But I don't often realize I'm doing it till somebody tells me to be quiet and often they just think I'm annoying It's really something to do with my brain chemistry that I don't understand Secondly I tend to be very blunt with people and so I often say things that easily offend Or nor people because I don't think about what I'm saying or I do think about it and just my brain's saying Oh, yeah, that's totally cool to say. I mean, it's the truth and obviously a lot of times people don't want to hear the truth So I do tend to offend or annoy people on accident Lastly we there tends to be things that We struggle with that a normal 20 year old adult should be able to do but I can't so I mean I had a mathematics degree before I even had a driver's license and I still struggled to drive So I limit my driving and then other things Car problems they see problems. I don't handle them well So I find it hard to be a adult despite having almost two degrees now But having said all this there is evidence of certain companies and organizations that are working hard to Bring these individuals into their workforce. For example, many tech companies are Discovering that autistic individuals their mindset provides valuable resources to their team SAP for example has an autism of work Program and is working to get their workforce up to 1% Autistic by 2020 because they found that these individuals do great with quality assurance reviews and their attention to detail allows them to review software and work on application development And this is the same across the board from Microsoft New Relic HP. They all have programs specifically focused on Hiring autistic individuals to work in their companies Secondly, we have the Israeli army everyone knows the Israeli army is a pretty strong military force very admired military force and they have dedicated a whole division called the visual intelligence division to Work with high functioning autistic individuals who were previously turned away from military duty They found that a lot of these individuals were high functioning enough to want to work it because every Israeli Adult when they turn 18 serves in military forces and they found that these high to functioning autistic Individuals who could do the work were getting disappointed that they were turned away So they created the visual intelligence division where these individuals sit in screens all day Looking for slight differences in satellite images that may indicate enemy movement Explosives or anything like that. So they found they're good at hyper focus high attention to detail seeing those differences over long periods of time and Even further what really shows how this is working out is a lot of these individuals are now moved being moved into the general population of the military because The commanders are and leaders are now learning how to work with these individuals and realizing There's not really much difference if we move them into the general population Lastly my me working for the past year at the Texas Department of Public Safety, which has led me here I believe is proof that this really can work. So I was great in academia. I did Four years got my math degree at 18. I am currently working on my master's degree should get it by the time I'm 21 and I actually had never even touched cyber security until one year ago decided to Jump in on an internship. I didn't really know what was it it was about But I didn't have anything better to do in my summer and now a year from now I'm speaking at Def Con about my work in cyber security. So I think that's pretty good evidence that it worked out Okay for me So I listed a few things that make me difficult to work with so now I'm gonna tell you How you can work with these individuals? Despite their disabilities So the first thing is awareness both the co-workers and the managers need to Understand that these individuals though they may have challenges associated with their condition that They they bring benefits and that's why they should be hired So you will need to adapt to the employee because their brain does work differently but that shouldn't scare you it's not a bad thing and I'll as I'll show you in a few minutes There's not much difference, but there's some and so like any other disability or ethnic difference or gender difference Don't let it be a Weight on your decision to hire an employee So like I said Neurodiverse individuals, especially those with autism have a very different brain chemistry And so you can't manage them the way that you'd manage all your other employees Because everything you say to them and every way you interact with them is gonna be taken a lot differently than would with a neurotypical employee So I'm gonna start off with some examples First example is maybe an employee. They high functioning or a regular employee They've got this great idea for a project. They want to work on a plan. They want to implement They bring it to you and you you don't have the bandwidth for new projects at the time So with a neurotypical employee you'd say sorry, we don't have the time. Let's bring it back up when it's when we're less busy However with an HFA employee you want to be more specific and say bring it up to me again in two weeks or two months or two years It doesn't really matter what amount of time but the term less busy is very difficult for and high functioning autistic to interpret because It's very vague and it's very subjective the term less busy. Well, some people can easily handle subjective Concepts we can't so something like two weeks makes it very Set in and so this comes from experience as I've heard the term when we're less busy and I start worrying about well if I bring up in two weeks Is that too soon and now they're mad because I'm bugging with them something that I brought up two weeks ago Stuff like that and so having it and also when when that I didn't get frustrated and act out I'm like well, why aren't my projects being considered blah blah blah and so then I've seen as selfish and Impatient whereas really I just need something more solid when you tell me bring up in two weeks I mark it on my calendar and done is gone for two weeks. So being less vague more direct so like I said a couple changes of words instead of saying less busy say two weeks and You've made a huge improvement in that employees work its experience second scenario is Every analyst usually has a series of projects a series of tasks and their day-to-day capabilities Day-to-day tasks and so you assign these to an employee and with a neurotypical employee All you need to do is hand them the stuff and say this is what you're currently working on The difficulty with neuro HFA employees is you need to also help them identify priorities And I'm not telling them everything you hand them give them a one two three four What this means is that you teach them to learn how to prioritize their work Because though we can work with a long list of jobs I'm not gonna understand what what is it on high priority for the organization again It's more of a subjective or conditional type thing. It's not me knowing right away So that's a kind of thing to help them learn how to identify Importance based on the work they're given So So the common theme among these things is these individuals need structure routine When they can clarity don't use vague terms and then the biggest thing of all of those is patience and understanding I Probably piss off my managers more than they'd like. I say a lot of things. I shouldn't I do a lot of things I shouldn't and luckily there they've learned that that is due to my slightly messed up brain And they've been very patient and understanding with that but they keep me around for some reason and I figured out it's because Even though I am By far not the smartest person in our office. I have the least experience probably the least technical knowledge of cybersecurity By bring productivity and efficiency even though I'm not the smartest I can typically crank out work at four times the speed of any other individual So I'm very thorough with my work. I have extreme attention to detail So I get to do get to do so the stuff isn't as fun But I do very well at things like requisition orders when we need stuff writing policies and procedures Writing Different documentation for our office because I can be very thorough with it and then also it dedicated a passionate employee Which is very important across any careers. You want to have a passionate employee not someone who's just there because it's a job So just to go a bit deeper like I said be as specific as possible But as time progresses also teach the employees how to enable themselves I also don't want people to just tell me what to do every time I want to learn how I can Interpret what you're saying myself instead of constantly having to have someone hold my hand I don't love having someone hold my hand. I sometimes need it, but I also want to learn how to enable myself and also individuals with HFA Typically when they show interest in something they become slightly obsessed. I have this issue many times in my childhood where I enjoyed something and then became obsessed and then spent Every afternoon out of school Focusing on that thing. However when you're employing an adult with this characteristic, it's the perfect opportunity I suggest what you do is with these individuals you identify With a topic if you see them getting really interested in network forensics Encourage them and help them find resources to learn more because they will dig in in their evenings after work and read All they can and become an expert on that topic and be completely happy doing it You're not forcing them to do it. They love it So that's why the things I do suggest is you you pay attention to what they're interested in and help them gain The skills in that area because they'll want to And lastly, I think this is one of the most important at least to me is you need to be a mentor So one of the things I found most helpful is every few months getting together with my manager 30 minutes at lunchtime and just discussing what where I need to improve and So it takes a little time out of your day, but it's probably I would say it's worth it for the manager Like I said, that's probably one of the most helpful things I've had Throughout throughout the past year is every few months just saying down 30 minutes because a lot of the time the things I do that are quirky or strange or inappropriate I don't realize I'm doing it and so that's I'm gonna sit down one-on-one Very and just be honest to say, okay, you need to stop doing this. You need to improve in this area It's it's definitely very helpful for me and some how I improve in those areas Usually I've seen that when I come back again and spend another 30 minutes I've ticked off the things on the list from last time. So I want to thank you all for attending my talk I know it wasn't the technical talk that are being given in most rooms But I hope it was some insight into an often not spoken about area and I'd like you all to definitely consider integrating the HFA community into your workplace more