As part of our ongoing series spotlighting cybersecurity leaders within the TryHackMe community, we sat down with Bianka Bálint, Cyber Incident Response Lead at DEKRA Technology & Services, to talk about her winding path into the industry, why humility and humanity matter as much as technical skill, and the advice she'd give to anyone breaking into, or switching into, a career in cyber.
On her role and how she got into cyber
Bianka leads technical incident response, threat hunting, and mentoring for her team, a role she describes as having far more to do with psychology and human behavior than people might expect.
"Currently I'm working as a SOC L3 analyst. When there's a huge incident we have to respond to, I'm leading that from a technical perspective, or when we're doing threat hunting or seeing a new threat, I'm trying to assess what we're facing and how to respond based on our best knowledge at that moment. I also have a team of L2s, and I'm supporting the L1 team's progress and incident response, writing playbooks, that kind of thing."
Her route into the field wasn't a straight line.
"My career was like a zigzag. It wasn't like I figured out from the get-go that I wanted to do incident response. In high school, I was interested in psychology and criminology, read all the crime novels I could get my hands on. But then I found out I had an aptitude for computers, so I thought,’ okay, let's try computer engineering.’ At the time I wasn’t aware of any cybersecurity-related faculties or bachelor's programs, so I learned to code in C, Python, everything, and I found out that if my life was going to be just coding all the time, I'd be so bored.
Shortly after, I ended up at a consulting firm, and that's where I learned more about cybersecurity and found out there was a faculty doing cybersecurity-related research at a university here in Hungary. I started inching closer and closer to those topics, and in my career I kept inching from information security toward more cybersecurity-focused roles. I tried consulting, then threat intelligence, and now I've ended up in incident response, which funnily enough has the most to do with psychology,criminology and computers. I'm very happy I managed to get here, because I enjoy my work, so it doesn't feel like work at all."
On mentors and finding your people
Bianka credits WITSEC, a women-in-IT-security community in Hungary, and a boss she deeply admired, with shaping how she thinks about learning and belonging in the industry.
"I got very lucky. In Hungary there’s a nonprofit organization for women in IT security, and for a while I was part of that. There were so many varied careers in cybersecurity represented there, and it was fun to see how many positions actually exist. Nobody really talks about it, it's not just hacking, it's not just red teaming, it's not just threat intel, it's a broad range of everything in between. And it's humanities too, after all you interact with people in these cyber-related roles. Meeting those women mattered a lot to me.
When I started my job, I learned that there are just so many things we still don't know. And that’s okay: you can do research, and if you have questions, just find your people and ask. People are actually happy to help and happy to answer your questions, and if you find someone who makes you feel stupid for not knowing something, that's not the right person, just go find the next one. They're going to help you. You're not stupid, you're learning. That's the coolest thing to do."
Outside of cyber, Bianka has often found herself the only woman in the room, and says it's taught her the value of an outsider's perspective.
"In my life I used to go to chess tournaments, and I was the only woman there. I'm also a gardener, and I can lay brick walls. And I'm a wine maker. I have a lot of hobbies where I'm either the sole woman or there's just a handful of us.
Understanding that it's not really that much of a difference, and that you can bring a valuable perspective the others don't necessarily have, matters. For instance, with brick laying, all the men were carrying ten bricks at a time and you could see it was wearing on them, and I said, why don't we just use a trolley, put all the bricks in the center? And they said, oh yeah, we can do that. It's not that hard, you don't need to suffer, and you definitely don't need to suffer alone. It's very important to say these things out loud."
On the value of unglamorous work
Bianka points to an early GDPR consulting project as an example of how sitting with what can feel like mundane and granular work can build a skill that pays off for years.
"I did GDPR-related consulting back in 2017, when that was the height of fashion. I had to actually read companies' policies, all of them, and at some organizations I think I was the first person to actually do that. It was a readiness assessment, not quite an audit: I'd highlight things I found interesting, including requirements they often didn’t even know they had. It was the most mundane, boring thing, but it led to so many good conversations, and I learned a great deal.
To this day I can read policies like nobody else can. If you spend time on something, you can become professional-level at it within a couple of months, and you can use that skill in other areas of your life later. It's not wasted time to proofread emails or get a sentence right, because next time you'll have learned a lot. I think people sometimes miss this, chasing the most exciting thing all the time instead."
On being that person for others
Asked how she creates space for others, the way mentors once did for her, Bianka's answer leaned less on frameworks and more on small, consistent acts of attention.
"I always try to praise people, even the smallest victories. I also try to be open about my own failing. I also think it’s so crucial to prioritise and put issues in perspective. Sometimes you just need to say ‘this problem has been here for a long time, we can fix it, but not today, let's focus on something more important for you and the team right now. And just understanding our constraints.’
It's a strange question, how to be there for people. You never really know when you were that person for someone. So just be nice, be kind, remember that most of the tasks aren't that important at the end of the day. It's important to be there for each other. That's my approach."
On psychological safety, burnout, and choosing your battles
Bianka is candid about her own experience with burnout, and pushes back on the idea that collecting certifications is the same as building real capability.
"There's a tendency in our field to just try to collect every certificate. But from my own life: you can buy the fanciest running shoe, and that won't make you a runner. What makes you a runner is going out for a run. You have fifteen minutes, you walk, you run for five minutes, you come home, and you've already achieved something, because you ran for five minutes you wouldn't otherwise have run. It wasn't the shoe.
So, choose your battles, choose what to fail at. I failed my OSCP exam multiple times back in the day, but at the time I had burnout. I was working for a Big Four firm, and there were stretches where I couldn't even wash my hair for two weeks. Stressing over OSCP shouldn't have been my priority, I had bigger issues. Sometimes it's just not the right time for something. I have two master's degrees, a lot of certificates. I managed to get into threat intelligence when people told me those roles didn't exist in Hungary. I'm proud of what I've achieved, and maybe OSCP will be a priority again one day.”
Her advice for the next generation entering cyber
Asked what she'd tell someone just starting out, or switching careers into cyber, Bianka pushed back gently on the anxiety around AI, and pointed instead to fundamentals, curiosity, and real human connection.
"AI gives everybody anxiety, and cybersecurity has always had its share of grifters and ambulance-chasers, 'this is the new threat, we're all going to die.' But the reality is, in 2026, most breaches still start with compromised credentials. There are still real, unglamorous issues we need to solve together.
However you get your foot in the door, that becomes your head start. If you start out managing desktops, you'll learn to be a service desk person, and from there you learn the next thing. What matters most is how you imagine yourself in the future, whether you're waiting for something to happen to you, or asking questions, understanding problems, having ideas, trying to develop yourself. On my team, the people who moved from level one to level two weren't just chasing certifications, they asked questions and actually tried to solve things, including by researching things themselves.
I think it's currently a hellscape out there with AI content everywhere, we're drowning in it, and it's harder to find the kind of grounded troubleshooting answers you used to find. The most important thing is learning the difference between the illusion of efficiency with AI and actual progress, real value. Generating a thirty-page policy with AI doesn't get you through an ISO audit.
Don't disconnect from real opportunities to reach out to people. You can ask AI plenty of questions, and you can learn how to learn from it, but go to a community event, meet a possible mentor, someone already doing what you want to do, and ask real questions. Maybe they'll remember you when they have an opening, and they'll care about your experience during the hiring process, because hiring is rough on everyone right now. So don't be discouraged because of AI. Stay curious.
When I have the most anxiety about my own skills, whether I'm the right person for this, I still get some imposter syndrome, I sit down and just focus on honing my skills, learning how to search for new things. I get real satisfaction from that, or from reading unrelated books, or unrelated hobbies, because then you can actually think about your work sideways, or go walk in nature and find your own voice. Don't feed the anxiety."
On staying human first, even with AI available
At DEKRA, Bianka says the team's approach is to define their processes first, and only then ask where AI genuinely adds value, rather than the reverse.
"I've chosen to be human-first. In our SOC we've had plenty of opportunities to turn to AI, but my policy is always to define our processes first, then figure out how we can apply AI. If it's not trustworthy, if it can't be audited, if it can't pass the basic bar our current people already pass, then it's not adding value. Sometimes that's as far as it goes. There should be advancement, and we're sticking with that direction, but learning basic skills, and learning about humans, will always matter. Those skills never go out of fashion, no matter what anyone tries to tell you."
On what she geeks out on now
Bianka's current focus has shifted from the purely technical to something more people-centered: teaching others to find and solve problems themselves.
"That's a tough question. I'd say threat hunting, uncovering new threats, developing our processes internally. But honestly, right now it's less about the tech and more about how to lead people toward finding these opportunities themselves, having fun, having some happiness in the workplace. That's a bit of a struggle for me, stepping back from the technical work and enabling others to run threat hunts, giving them pointers on what to look for, instead of just doing it myself faster. Going through the struggle together, and having them learn, that's what I'm working on right now, getting better at teaching."
On giving yourself grace
Asked if there was anything she wished she'd been asked, Bianka circled back to something she often tells her younger sister.
"I have a sister, she's twenty-two. A lot of people in their twenties feel like they're behind, like there's so much they should have already done. People really need to understand it's okay to feel like this. We can't do everything in our lifespans, even if we're lucky enough to live to eighty. If you're interested in everything, you won't be able to complete everything.
Try to bring happiness into your life every day. If you can find a job that does that, you'll be fine. And maybe your life isn't going to look how you imagined it, but you may have already succeeded in a different area than the one you pictured. Give yourself some grace sometimes."
On why this conversation still matters
Bianka pushed back gently on the idea that women-in-cyber conversations have become unnecessary, pointing to hiring practices, career switchers, and the value of skills that often go unrecognized.
"People sometimes ask why we still need to talk about this, there are so many women in cybersecurity now. But there are still girls out there who think this is just a boy thing, and we still need to talk about it and change processes.
When I was hired at a previous company, they had a policy that for certain roles, at least one woman had to be interviewed. That's a small kind of friction in the system, because otherwise people default to 'just hire the first right person, that should be enough.'
There's still opportunity we can find, still people who aren't being heard. I have a friend who took a career pause to raise her two kids, and afterward she said, you need to understand, I manage a crisis every day, I manage two people's entire lives every day. Her management skills got so much sharper, she prioritizes tasks better, she knows what to automate because she has to, she knows how to delegate. There are unique skills like that which are still untapped, and the human side of it shouldn't be ignored either."
Career switchers, whether they're taking a pause to care for family or coming from an entirely different field, bring exactly the kind of transferable skill the industry needs, in Bianka's view, if they can get past a hiring system she describes bluntly.
"If you have the basics right, DNS, HTTP, the fundamentals, you'll be so much better off, and you have no idea how transferable a lot of your existing skills already are. You also need luck, a lot of luck, in getting a certain position, but you should put yourself in the way of those opportunities, be on the lookout. And we should be honest that hiring right now is a really challenging. There are so many hoops people have to jump through for a job that often ends up being about managing spreadsheets. People should know, more often than not, it's not you, it's the system. It's going to come your way, it just takes patience, sometimes more than you'd like.Give yourself time."
On working across differences, together
Bianka closed by reflecting on what it takes for men and women to genuinely work well together in an industry, and a world that she feels is growing more digitized and more distant.
"It takes a mind shift, how we can work together, men and women. I had a colleague once who told me not to react emotionally, after I'd sent a professional written statement about an issue, not an emotional one, to some legal departments. I told him exactly that. We didn't speak for a while, then about six months later we sat down and talked, and found we had more in common than we thought. He's in his fifties, I'm in my thirties, but you never know until you actually listen to the other person. I think AI and our overly digitized world are creating a lot of distance right now. It's still important to get together, learn from other people, sit next to each other in the office sometimes, and reach out. Be human beings together."
Joanna Duffy