Want to Crush Something? Try Starting with the Mythology of the Brogrammer.
Three concrete steps toward the transformation of cybersecurity and infosec that鈥檚 already happening.
鈥淲ant to bro down and crush some code? Klout is hiring.鈥
So read the social media analytics company鈥檚 unfortunate poster ad at a Stanford career fair ().
Joke or not, it became just another chapter in the evolving story of 鈥渂rogrammer鈥 culture: the frat boy norms and behaviors that govern many a tech and startup work environment. The 鈥渂rogrammer鈥 is a pretty hyped figure these days, but he isn鈥檛 going anywhere anytime soon. So much of the cybersecurity field is steeped in his image, which isn鈥檛 a surprise if you think about the combination of military culture and geek culture that makes up cybersecurity鈥娾斺奱 much more tech-meets-military milieu than your average technology company.
What may be surprising, given how many of us think of men in hoodies when we think of the industry, is that so many cybersecurity and information security companies want to bring more women into the field鈥娾斺奿n fact they鈥檙e desperate for new talent. With the field nowhere near close to having the number of workers it needs in the lucrative fight against cybercrime, cybersecurity companies are eager to fill the gap. They want to deflate brogrammer culture, but aren鈥檛 quite sure how.
To help light the way forward, 国产视频鈥檚 Women in Cybersecurity Project is building a toolkit for cybersecurity and information security businesses that want to bring more women into their companies. At Cybersecurity for a 国产视频, I talked about three simple, concrete techniques that cybersecurity companies can use to bring more women into the field right now.
1. Start by taking a fresh look at your website and advertising. Pretend you鈥檙e your daughter or sister and look at your site and ads with fresh eyes (or better yet鈥娾斺奱sk a woman in your life to take a look). If you were a woman, would you be excited about approaching your company? Would you feel welcome? As I said at the conference, if it looks like Rambo designed your site, you鈥檙e probably not going to have women banging down your door to apply for jobs. And remember, look at the whole site and all of your ads, not just those targeting prospective applicants.
If there are women in top roles at your company, build their public personas. (You can start by connecting them to us鈥娾斺妛e鈥檒l help.)
2. Are there women in the top ranks of your company? If not, get women in your leadership and on your board, and do it now. Research shows that across fields women and minorities imagine themselves in a field more easily if they see examples of people like them in leadership positions. If there are women in top roles at your company, build their public personas. (You can start by connecting them to us鈥娾斺妛e鈥檒l help.) Some companies are doing this very well. FireEye, for one, has a roster of dynamic female leaders that鈥檚 often in the public eye, and that draws women to the company because they feel more welcome.
3. Finally, get a sense of your employees鈥 overwork. At Cybersecurity for a 国产视频, we heard from my colleague Elizabeth Weingarten of 国产视频鈥檚 Better Life Lab about the effects of overwork on employees and companies鈥 bottom lines. Burnout has an especially large impact on women and millennials. If your employees are regularly working late nights, assess whether that extra time is worth burnout and turnover.
These three ideas are just a starting point for cybersecurity companies to learn how to bring more women into their workforces and help them thrive. The infosec and cybersecurity field is on the cusp of dramatically changing the way women perceive the field and the way they experience it. Let鈥檚 kick the effort into high gear.
Megan E. Garcia is is Senior Fellow & Director of 国产视频 CA. She leads 国产视频鈥檚 Women in Cybersecurity Project.
This post is part of Humans of Cybersecurity, a dedicated section on Context that celebrates stories of the people and ideas that are are changing our digital lives. It is part of 国产视频鈥檚 Women in Cybersecurity Project, which seeks to dramatically increase the representation of women in the cybersecurity/information security field by fostering strategic partnerships with industry leaders, producing cutting-edge workforce research, and championing women鈥檚 voices in media. This is a project of 国产视频鈥檚 broader Cybersecurity Initiative, which aims to clarify and connect the often disjointed debates and policies that surround the security of our networks.