Women in Security: Kasia Hanson

Although Intel's Kasia Hanson is “newer to the industry,” as she puts it, she has been impressed with the pace at which the industry is moving to grow diversity. “When I attend events and meetings, I always scan the number of women and it seems to be growing, but we certainly have a ways to go,” she noted. “There are many women in the industry who have paved the way for this point in time and continue to infuse energy, ideas and collaboration into the industry, which I am confident will continue and result in increasing diversity and, more importantly, a proliferation of solutions that help solve our customers business problems.”

Hanson said that she viewed entering a male dominated industry as an opportunity, not a challenge. “I have had very good experience interacting with both male and female counterparts in the industry to understand what we as a community can do to grow the industry and move it forward together,” she noted. “There are many leaders in the industry who have embraced growing diversity and have taken the time to mentor me along the way, including Jim Henry at Securitas, Andrew & Christine Lanning at Integrated Security Technologies, Bill Bozeman from PSA, Ray Coulombe of Security Specifiers, Ken Mills of Dell and Maureen Carlo of BCDVideo.”

Hanson, who is the Global IOT Partner Sales Leader for Digital Security Surveillance and Safe Cities at Intel, has been with the company for 19 years in roles that span data center, client compute and storage. In early 2018 she was offered an opportunity to join Intel's IOT sales group to drive Intel's ecosystem development and sales acceleration with its Video partners. “My family has been in law enforcement so joining this team was an exciting opportunity to learn about a new space, especially enabling Smart City and Public Safety solutions, grow our partnerships in the industry and lean on my strengths of developing/expanding relationships to accelerate sales with our partners,” she said.

Hanson credits her mom, who as a single teenager raised her to “show respect and embrace gratitude for every milestone I achieved,” and who has “called out my strengths and challenged me to grow as a leader.” She also credits many male and female mentors at Intel who taught her to always look at the big picture and understand the mission, and who “challenges me to dive deeply into a topic, ask questions and listen more than talk (never an easy task),” she explained.

Coming from outside the security industry, Hanson sees a great opportunity for security to leverage new technology.
“The industry has an opportunity to capitalize on emerging technologies such as AI at the edge,” she explained. “The World Economic Forum has forecast that AI will add 58 million new jobs worldwide by 2022 and create $13 trillion in economic activity by 2030.

When I meet with integrators the No. 1 request is to help educate them on AI and solutions that are enabled & vetted to solve business problems. AI adoption is moving very fast; I liken it to a freight train, as new solutions are coming at the market rapidly, so helping to educate and enable an industry to harness it is a priority and where I have spent a lot of my time over the last two years.”

Hanson pointed out that the SIA Women in Security Forum Group has been highly successful in bringing strong female leaders in the industry together. “I am a big supporter of women helping women so the more we can do to help women entering the industry at all levels, the better we as a community will be,” she said.

And as new technologies such as AI and cybersecurity transform the industry, “it's important to understand it and the impacts of these technologies for the industry,” she said. “It's important to embrace all ideas, continue to educate ourselves on industry trends, pain points and solutions and how we can add value to moving the industry forward together; it's really a collaborative effort.”