Cyber ​​security can provide a way for underrepresented groups to enter tech – TechCrunch


Diversity was a welcome message at last week’s AWS Re:Inforce, the company’s security event in Boston. Given the number of people needed in cybersecurity in the coming years, it looks like it could represent a way for historically underrepresented groups to enter the technology.

CJ Moses, CISO at AWS, spoke at the company’s keynote about the importance of different ways of thinking when it comes to securing companies. “Another key part of our culture is having a lot of people with different perspectives in the room. “This can be an introspection or conflict that comes from different backgrounds or cultures, allowing your culture to see things differently and challenge each other,” he said.

He added that new ways of thinking can be transformed into cyber security teams. “I think new hires can bring a lot of transparency to a team because they don’t have years of bias or think a team is baked into their practices. So when you’re hiring, our best practices are to be mindful of the makeup of your interview panels, encouraging diversity of perspectives and backgrounds, because diversity makes a difference.

Jasmine Henry, director of field security at startup Jupiter On, recently helped produce a book called Reinventing Cybersecurity, looking at how women and trans people are changing the field of cybersecurity. But to fully achieve that change, companies need to hire more diverse candidates. Henry recognizes that it is the industry’s responsibility to make the workforce more diverse, especially at large organizations like AWS.

I think there are a lot of people who really want to get into it. I think of it as a skills mismatch rather than a skills gap, because there are individuals who are willing and able and willing to work. [in this field]. So I think there’s a lot of responsibility on employers, especially large employers, to train these practices, to develop their own workforce, to partner with community groups…to train individuals who want to fill those roles,” Henry said.

She said that by helping people like her get the skills they need to work in the field when they enter the field, they can help others climb the ladder. “I’m a first-generation college graduate, I don’t come from wealth. Welfare was the way I became middle class, and I was proud of it. And I’m excited to mentor others, especially first-generation college students,” she said.

In general, the tech industry has not done well when it comes to diversity. According to recruitment site, Zippia, only 25% of tech workers are women, even though they make up half of the population, 7% are black, 14% of the general US population and 8% of those over 18 are Latinx. % of total US population.

Looking specifically at cybersecurity jobs, women hold 24 percent of those jobs, blacks 9 percent and Latinos only 4 percent, according to an Aspen Institute study.

Jenny Brinkley, director of security at AWS, says Amazon takes this responsibility exceptionally seriously. In fact, she says, the company sees wellness as a way to bring more diversity to the company as a whole. “We focus on how we can contribute [as a company]”Let open source contribute to developing talent by creating and identifying skill gaps for these cybersecurity jobs,” she said.

Echoing what Moses said in his keynote, Brinkley believes that security in particular takes a different mindset. “When we think about neurodiversity and inclusion and equity and diversity, we can start to talk more about it. Well-being really represents a time when we start talking about how to create and find individuals who can fulfill these jobs. These jobs are jobs that have the potential to create multifaceted wealth for individuals.” She sees a huge opportunity for people whose high-paying jobs have historically been left behind.

When Henry put the book together earlier this year, she said she saw a way to highlight different voices and see diversity in the field. “I’ve learned a lot about myself along the way because I’ve realized that I have to be intentional about diversity when I’m gathering authors, and I’ve realized that a lot of people want to talk about identity. They want to talk about safety through the lens of communication,” she says.

The Aspen Institute has some concrete recommendations for increasing cybersecurity diversity, including taking on the burden of certification costs, which large companies can certainly do. Creating partnerships with organizations that can bring in a wide variety of candidates; And creating mentoring programs that focus on different people, among other things.



Source link

Related posts

Leave a Comment

1 × 2 =