Women in cybersecurity — a mini Who’s Who

I started my career in science. When I left the pharmaceutical industry in the mid-‘90s, I was one of seven women in a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant with over 200 men. So when I came into the tech industry, I had some experience of being a lone female in a sea of male faces.

However, when I first became involved in cybersecurity back in the ‘90s, I was shocked at the lack of females anywhere. At Infosec Europe back in 1998, I felt like I was the only woman in the whole exhibition — apart from the “booth babes,” of course. 20 years later, things haven’t changed much. This Twitter discussion on the matter by cybersecurity consultant Jane Frankland shows that even now, women are presented at shows as a kind of prize for the male attendees:

You can’t help but feel like an outsider. I suffer from “only woman in the room” syndrome to this day. In a recent technical meeting I attended, there were 22 people in the room — I was the only female.

I know that there will be some folks, male and female, reading this, sighing and thinking “Oh, no, not another whining woman.” But I’m not here to whine about the lack of female representation in the industry, even with less than one-quarter of the workforce being female. No, I am here to celebrate the amazing women who are contributing, along with their male colleagues, to an industry that is blossoming.

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Before leaping into my list of interesting and clever women in cybersecurity, I want to stress something. This list only shows a small subset of women in this industry. These women here have already achieved a high profile, but they are not alone.

There are women coming fast behind them, raised by women (Read more...)