How to create a more diverse cybersecurity workforce

Introduction

Some people reading this will probably think, oh no, not another article about diversity in the workplace. But what is diversity?

Cybersecurity threats are now as much about the human factor as the technological. It makes sense to have as many different eyes and voices within a team looking to mitigate threats, as there are threat vectors. Diversity in cybersecurity is about creating a group of people to reflect the real-world; diverse people to give a perspective on a diverse problem. 

But what does it take to create a diverse workforce in cybersecurity when the field has a reputation of being anything but?

The current landscape for diversity in cybersecurity

A typical IT security team would be composed of around 24% female staff or around 26%

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ethnic minority staff, the latter tending to hold non-managerial positions. Parity of salary is a serious issue for minority groups, especially female minorities. Women of color earn almost $10K less than their white male counterparts.

I haven’t included anyone who is from the LGBTQ community or disabled, as I don’t have recent figures for cybersecurity, but you can probably extrapolate from the above that their representation is pretty low.

There will be exceptions to the above “typical” team, but those exceptions only serve to prove the rule.

We build what we are

I will start by showing a recent tweet from Lisa LeVasseur. Lisa is a founder of the Me2B Alliance and has a long history of working in the tech sector.

“We build what we are.” This is the crucial message I want to use in this article.

Cybersecurity is about human beings as much as it is about technology. We have seen this time and again. Verizon’s 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) pointed out that human factors are (Read more...)