To commemorate F-Secure’s 30th year of innovation, we’re profiling 30 of our fellows from our more than 25 offices around the globe.
Thousands of fellows have joined F-Secure in our 30 year history. Unsurprisingly, many of their paths to cyber security included a ton of gaming.
At the age of 15, our co-founder Risto Siilasmaa dreamed of coding the world’s greatest adventure game. Mikko Hypponen, our Chief Research Officer, recently had an adventure game he created for the Commodore 64 with his brother Ari back in 1987 added to the Finnish Gaming Museum.
But few fellows have reached the heights of competitive gaming as current F-Secure Poznan software engineer Joanna Tórz.
“If you are into games, fighting games in particular, you will see me participating in Tekken World Tour series of tournaments that is scheduled for whole year,” she told us.
F-Secure proudly backs Joanna in the series that includes 40 tournaments around the world, supporting the habit that helped her find her way into cyber security.
Her passion for gaming was awoken when she discovered Super Frog game on her cousin’s Amiga, and later Super Mario and Contra on a Pegasus platform. But it was her love for Tekken that encouraged her to cultivate some serious skills.
“I wanted to create a website for Tekken fans,” she said.
And she found that the skills she developed with non-stop gaming, including “sharpness and attention to details” along with “curiosity, creativeness, dedication,” translated into her new passion for coding.
“These are the qualities that I believe are also vital to become a good software engineer.”
In F-Secure she sees many of the qualities of a classic video game series like Tekken that began in 1994, just six years after the seeds were planted for F-Secure in 1988, when Joanna was first learning to walk.
“F-Secure has a long history but is also constantly up to date with newest trends,” she said. “Rock-solid but also reactive and adaptable.”
She also appreciates the fellowship and that has been emphasized since the 1980s.
Looking 30 years into the future she hopes to see “much cheaper and environmental-friendly source of energy.” But for now she keeps programming against the latest cyber threats through her three monitors during the weekdays and competing with top Tekken players around the world in her free time.
“I’ll do my best to spread F-Secure name and cyber security awareness in fighting games community,” she said. “And what do you fight for?”
Check out our open positions if you want to join Joanna and the hundreds of other great fellows fighting to keep internet users safe from online threats.
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