[1] She joined the National Security Agency (NSA) where, for more than four decades, she worked at Fort Meade, Maryland as a cryptanalyst and supervisor.
[2] During the 1980s, her work did in cryptographic code, including against a series of challenging manual cryptosystems, allowed Holmes to build an impressive range of expertise in a variety of target languages.
[3] At Fort Meade, she analyzed many dozens of manual systems from many targets and became notable because none of them were monoalphabetic (called a substitution cipher) and each required the cryptanalyst to discover a nontrivial trick, thus making de-coding particularly difficult.
As a cryptanalysis teacher and supervisor, Holmes passed on to her students and interns her own pragmatic application of technique and knowledge.
"[2] Her induction included a summary of her contribution.A career cryptanalyst who inspired and motivated her students and colleagues with her patience and persistence in solving some of the most difficult cryptanalytic problems in the late 20th century.