Security News > 2021 > August > Behind the scenes: A day in the life of a cybersecurity expert
Leading a team is kind of like when a burglar alarm goes off and "You're the police," says the head of cybersecurity at ExpressVPN. Aaron Engel was born in Seabrook, Texas, a Houston suburb with about 10,000 people, in 1984.
Now the head of cybersecurity at ExpressVPN, where he leads a team of cybersecurity engineers, Engel can trace his interest in the field back to that point.
Engel manages three teams at ExpressVPN-"Security engineering, the security operation center analysts, who are responsible for looking for threats inside of our environment, and then finally we also have a group of red teamers and penetration testers." He also liaises with other department heads to make sure they're up to date on the services and are incorporating security into their teams.
"My biggest challenge is how to determine what we need to work on next," Engel said.
"A common misconception about cybersecurity is that it's literally just two people sitting in a dark room waiting for a screen to turn red, and then they maybe flick a couple buttons," Engel said.
"Alerts, crafting of alerts, doing research, learning about new things, improving your knowledge, working to improve new security controls," Engel said.