[custom_adv] She is Google's top secret weapon, charged with guarding the world's most valuable brand. Parisa Tabriz is the company's card up the sleeve - a young professional hacker they call their "Security Princess". [custom_adv] Her task is to protect the nearly one billion users of Google Chrome - the most-used Internet browser on the planet. Miss Tabriz, 31, is something of an anomaly in Silicon Valley. [custom_adv] Not only is she a woman - a gender hugely under-represented in the booming tech industry - but she is a boss heading up a mostly male team of 30 experts in the US and Europe. [custom_adv] Miss Tabriz, who in 2012 was named one of the top 30 under 30 to watch by Forbes magazine, thinks the lack of women in tech is because they do themselves down. [custom_adv] Miss Tabriz grew up in the suburbs of Chicago with her Iranian-immigrant father, a doctor, and Polish-American nurse mother, both of whom were incredibly smart but computer illiterate. [custom_adv] She was inspired by the story of one of the earliest hackers, John Draper, otherwise known as Captain Crunch. Draper was working as a US Air Force radar technician when, in the late 1960s, he discovered how to make free long-distance calls using a toy whistle packaged in boxes of Cap'n Crunch cereal. [custom_adv] Earlier this year, Google became the first in the Valley to publish figures on the diversity of its workforce. They revealed just 30 out of every 100 staff members are female. [custom_adv] The event received overwhelming response with over 300 participants from a wide variety of backgrounds including information security practitioners, researchers, students and staff. The ensuing Q&A session was actively participated by the audiences.
