International Women in Cyber Day Commentary

By – Ms. Mandy Andress, Chief Information Security Officer at Elastic

Mandy Andress_Elastic

In the face of a rising tide of new threats and tactics, the industry needs different perspectives for a varied, yet nuanced approach to cybersecurity. Malicious actors work tirelessly to explore new tactics, find new vulnerabilities, and identify novel ways to bypass controls. A more diverse IT security team is better equipped to adopt the resourcefulness and the spontaneity of the ‘hacker mindset’ needed to counter these attacks.

To mark International Women in Cyber Day, I’d like to suggest that our industry takes two crucial steps to include more women in our teams.

To encourage more diverse candidates and women to join cybersecurity roles, we need to broaden the scope of the qualifications we seek in candidates. Looking beyond traditional schooling and career paths, we must consider other skills and personality traits that might enhance the way we protect IT systems.

Second, we need to work harder to encourage more women to join us. That might mean reviewing how and where we advertise roles so that news of open positions reaches more women.

In a multidisciplinary field like cybersecurity (or data science, for that matter), the routine exclusion of female viewpoints isn’t just a barrier to good work – it’s a vulnerability. And in my view, from my day-to-day experience as a CISO, a more diverse cybersecurity team is definitely a better cybersecurity team.

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