![\"SIS](\"https:\/\/cci.utk.edu\/sis\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/08\/OleBW-300x274.jpg\")
When data are valuable products stored behind closed gates, monitoring those gates are people such as SIS alum Ole Villadsen (\u201915).<\/p>\nWhen data are valuable products stored behind closed gates, monitoring those gates are people such as SIS alum Ole Villadsen (\u201915).<\/p>\n
Villadsen works at IBM as part of the cyber security team; his role is to support incident response investigations by providing intelligence support, and he is also building a database of threat information.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love it, it\u2019s great to be able to do both the hunting and the farming. Hunting in terms of supporting the investigations, and the farming is building out the database and making sure it\u2019s a usable tool to support investigations,\u201d Villadsen said.<\/p>\n
He discovered information sciences in a roundabout method, after working as an analyst both in the military and then as a civilian for a total of 20 years. After two decades of government work, he decided it was time for a change, and began researching the organization and retrieval side of intelligence. He already had a bachelor\u2019s degree in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia and a master\u2019s in national security studies from Georgetown University before he started pursuing a master\u2019s in information science.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to learn new skills and perhaps live somewhere else and do different things. I did a lot of research on what was out there and what I could learn about that would match my current interest and skills, and I discovered information science,\u201d Villadsen said, and additional research led him to choose the SIS program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.<\/p>\n
Villadsen was living and working in northern Virginia when he started the MSIS program in the spring of 2014, and he finished the program in fall of 2015. In July 2018, he started his job at IBM in Colorado.<\/p>\n
While his current job has parallels to the security work he did for the government, Villadsen said it is in a much different context, and adding the database to his tasks has allowed him to employ his information science skills. The database is a repository of information that can either help mitigate an incident already occurring or sometimes predict incidents before they begin.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs soon as we see another kind of indicator of compromise, we can check the database to see if we have seen that before and quickly start to build out the investigation,\u201d Villadsen said. \u201cIt is fair to say that, with regard to the database, with all the activity we enter in there and the modeling, we are the librarians of that database.\u201d<\/p>\n
Villadsen said he envisions the word \u201clibrarian\u201d evolving into a skill that is a part of many jobs, as the information explosion continues and more people find themselves in the position of curating it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not just about librarians as a title, but as a job responsibility, and that\u2019s becoming more and more common. That people will have a responsibility to organize information as part of a job \u2013 that\u2019s one direction things are moving in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Database librarianship was just one skill Villadsen learned through the MSIS program \u2013 but perhaps not even the most valuable one. As he was taking classes, he said he learned how to seek out and learn new programs, new technologies. Basically, he learned how to learn.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything changes, there\u2019s always a new application, a new type of database, you\u2019re never going to learn it all. So learning how to learn it all is a big part of the program. I got really good project ideas, and I got exposure to a lot of different tools that helped me to learn about other tools,\u201d he said. This has served Villadsen particularly well at his current job, and he said he looks forward to seeing what new program or skill he can learn, and how he can apply that to what he does.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not the same person before going to school that I am now, in terms of my ability. I\u2019m always learning a new tool, always learning something different, and that wasn\u2019t always the way it was before. My whole outlook on learning and what I like to do changed a lot,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s never been a dull moment in terms of learning stuff, and I\u2019m in an environment now at IBM that is exciting. There\u2019s always something new that we\u2019re trying to build out, invent, or make better, and that\u2019s very consistent with what I learned at UT.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When data are valuable products stored behind closed gates, monitoring those gates are people such as SIS alum Ole Villadsen (\u201915). Villadsen works at IBM as part of the cyber security team; his role is to support incident response investigations by providing intelligence support, and he is also building a database of threat information. \u201cI […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[140,3],"tags":[123,82,141,142,29],"class_list":["post-6481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumni-news","category-announcements","tag-alum","tag-alumni","tag-ole-villadsen","tag-security-intelligence","tag-veteran"],"yoast_head":"\n