Closing the Gender Gap in Cybersecurity: Its Time to Back Ourselves as an Industry

Whilst I spent most of my maternity leave in coffee shops and parks, I did manage to engage my brain for long enough to write a few industry reports, one on the reformation of the computer science GCSE, and one on closing the gender gap in cybersecurity. The lack of women in the industry is something that has always perplexed me, but this research allowed me to truly indulge my curiosity by spending time with representatives from across the industry; from government departments to recruiters to pen-testers to CISOs, and get to the bottom of why there is such a lack of women, and what can be done about it.

At the Big Bang Careers Fair earlier this year, CREST, in partnership with the government, ran a digital defenders stand to try and encourage schoolchildren to consider careers in cybersecurity. Interestingly – and encouragingly – they welcomed to the stand just as many schoolgirls as schoolboys expressing an interest in cybersecurity. That’s the good news. Yet, only 17% of computer science graduates are females, and according to the latest (ISC)2workforce study, only 10% of industry professionals are women. So what’s going wrong and why are we, as an industry, not converting those interested schoolgirls into graduates and then industry professionals?

Does it even matter? Many industries have gender imbalance, so is it something we should even be worrying about? The answer is unequivocally yes. There are arguments that a diverse workforce increases productivity; that research shows increased profitability in companies with more women; and recruiters even say that women bring a loyalty and stability to the industry that male counterparts, on the whole, don’t. Whilst these arguments are all valid, it’s actually simpler than that: cybersecurity is facing a frightening skills gap, with predictions that by 2020 there will be 1.5 million unfilled positions, so to put it simply, we need more people, so we need more women. It just makes sense. For the full article click here

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