Anna Evans

Anna is a threat hunter in our cyber team

Threat Hunter

My ambition was to be a doctor when I was younger. But a stint of work experience convinced me the medical frontline was not for me. Instead, I studied maths at Manchester University to masters level.

I joined our graduate scheme last year. My first placement was in cyber within the protective monitoring and threat intelligence team and I fell in love with cyber immediately.

My role was to gather intelligence, keeping ahead of threats and trends. I don't have a healthcare degree, but I do have an analytical maths brain and I like looking for trends and scrutinising patterns.

Every day, I'm actively encouraged to bring my ideas. You can't have intelligence without diversity; you need to be able to see things from a different perspective and way of thinking.

Working here feels real. You can see the connection between stories in the media, the patients and the threats you're monitoring or data you're working with. This makes the work exciting; every day is different.

It was massively daunting coming into a big organisation straight from uni. I've had so much support every day. Everyone here is genuinely lovely and wants to help you succeed.

Grad schemes don't usually feature opportunities like cyber and data analysis. I think we offer an attractive proposition for those looking for a challenge. It's a little bit different from the norm.

Since completing the graduate scheme, Anna has gone on to work in a permanent role as a threat hunter in the cyber team.