Panel - European Cybersecurity Job Market and the Gender Perspective

Thank you so much. So for today's event, I have two brilliant talking partners. One of them is rhino Stanka. I hope I can pronounce your name properly. Welcome in the panel. Rhino is the vice president of governance and public affairs at yes, we hack.

Yes, we hack is a global bug Ty and coordinated vulnerability disclosure leader. Rhinos is risk management and crisis mitigation expert with a focus on security governance, data protection and compliance. And my other talking partner is sh Christoff ARD. He's the managing director of cos partners and he's, he's a senior executive and team builder with over 25 years of experience developed in several global financial institutions in the UK, and also also continental Europe.

Now the panel topic that we are going to discuss is, is, is, is the gender issue, female inequality or equality in cybersecurity in general, but to set the scene, let me highlight something different, but I hope related at least to a certain extent on the Martin of the recent us presidential election. We see the first ever FEMA vice president elect Madam Kamala, Madam vice president elect Mrs. Ms. Kamala Harris getting on board and that's all over the news that this needs to signify a real change and enable women to take the highest positions.

So my first question goes to rhino that, that, how do you see this? Can this change in the us political leadership indicate any kind of related change in the EU side security job market?

Ah, well, first of all, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure in the honor to, to share insights with esteemed colleagues today. Personally, I'm a huge fan of vice president like Kamal Harris because of her inspiration and her determination to, to serve her country and her ideals. And I think this embodies a part of the challenge we have today in cybersecurity, which is to change the way things are viewed, the way things, the way people who do cybersecurity, who do technology more generally are seen.

So, you know, it it's when, when I got invited to this panel, I did my homework a little, and it was interesting to me because I'm a trained scientist. So I was interested to see whether in cybersecurity, we have the same misrepresentation or underrepresentation as in, in science. And the figures I found is, you know, showcase and even more dire situation where we only have 7% of European cybersecurity professionals who are women today. And only 1% of those are in senior management positions, which is, you know, 1% that's a margin affair, right?

So having a woman of color to, you know, raise to a vice presidential position is not to me a way of tokenizing women, you know, but it's a way to say, look, it is possible. And what I saw on, on, on social networks is a lot of little girls with those.

T-shirts saying, my VP looks like me and this, I think, you know, is this challenge to change present representations and images that well, yes, anyone provided they have, you know, determination, they are committed to succeeding and to moving forward with, with ideas, anyone can, of course be successful and, and reach well directorship if this is what people want or well, more senior technology, you know, expertise, positions, what we need.

And I think this will flow in, in the coming minutes in our discussion is an environment that enables that, you know, helps people grow to where, you know, their ambition for professional development leads them. So that means providing opportunities is absolutely necessary, fundamentally necessary. Yeah. Opportunities.

I'm, I'm always, you know, looking beyond the simple, well, quote unquote opportunity because of course, I mean, opportunities do exist. The question is that beyond skills, beyond, you know, technical knowledge, there are so many structural challenges and structural changes that need to happen to avoid a leaky pipeline.

You know, we have this in, in, in the scientific realm in research and we do have this in, in, in cybersecurity where of course a lot of people may want to enter the field, however do they manage to do so. And that's a, and B do they manage to basically build a career, you know, up to a strategic position, up to a C level position, right? And this is my guess, you know, we do have the opportunities.

I mean, they are more than 3 million, you know, talent shortage today in cybersecurity alone. The question is how do we make sure those talents that we manage to identify and involve and include actually grow and do stay in the field where they contribute to a common, like, you know, to common good finally, right. So this is, to me, more of a challenge, how do we, you know, nurture those talents to help them grow, Just to jump in here and to add to what right now was saying, what we see, I think with Kamala Harris is, is a, is a fan fantastic example of, of what a role model needs to be.

And, and I think that's what tragically missing for many women in cybersecurity, especially when it comes to the, to, to the senior leadership positions. How do you get to those positions if you're women, if you're woman, I think this is, this is very, very hard.

If, if you cannot see people who have done it before, as I, as I mentioned to, to, to the, to the panelists, when we were prepping earlier, when I looked into my network, I mean, you know, I, I, I could hardly identify more than a handful of, of, of women in senior leadership, you know, cybersecurity positions. I could only identify one senior partner in, in consulting firms, you know, in cybersecurity. That's not right. That's not right. Then that's a problem in absence of any leadership in any role model, credible, visible, tangible role model.

It's always going to be hard for senior opportunities to develop. And for people who want to go into those jobs, I think this is one aspect of the, of, of the problem, which we definitely need to bear in mind. Thank you. I fully agree. But before Brian, excuse me, before I let you speak again, just one question to drop in at this point, can we identify, or can we name some certain or significant obstacles that should be overcome? Yeah. Yeah. I'm happy to jump in on this and to get, get going.

I think what we are seeing first of all in, in, in the cybersecurity industry is, is, is something which is more or less inherent to the anti-tech industry. And, and, and, you know, if there is a fundamental problem of, of, you know, in relation to the role of women in tech in general, and what we, we are seeing, we are seeing cybersecurity, inheriting many of the problems of the tech industry at large. And I think that's one of the, one of the things we have to confront to attract a greater diversity of talent into cybersecurity. We have to showcase a greater diversity of roles.

We have to get away from the narrative and the visual of the, the guy in the hoodie in the basement. You know, we have to get away from that. It's silly, but you just have to go online and see how many articles there are, which are using the stupid visual we have to get away from that. We have to extract cybersecurity from the, the tech heavy, the narrow tech narrative's been carrying for so long and start showcasing the diversity of roles which exist at that stage. We will start seeing a greater diversity of talent coming in. And of course, lots, a lot more women will come in as well.

This is not just about tech. There are countless role in cyber security where you need expertise and skills beyond tech.

You know, of course the leadership roles are inherently leadership roles and, and they need, you know, inherently transversal leadership management, document, personal gravitas, and all those things, which are absolutely not something which is, you know, reserved to, to men far from it. I mean, but you know, if you look at that awareness development, that security training and auditing, but all those jobs, those are not tech jobs and, and they, and, and you need an amount of transversal skills, which are not showcased enough. Exactly. Exactly. Let me jump in at this point. I stopped you.

Yeah. Yeah. Sorry about interrupting you. That's brilliant what you are saying. And before I give the fraud to rhino, now I have to, I have to give another secret away. Okay. My company is a, is full of ethical hackers. 95% of our employees are certified ethical hackers. And honestly, none of them were who is in the office. They are not empires.

They are, they are real people, you know, flesh and blood with everyday problems. And they live in daylight.

Rhino, please. Yeah, that's I, I like your non vampire description of things.

I mean, it's, it's, it's an interesting parallel because yes, we hack. We are, you know, 42 and, and still growing. And that's not a joke.

You know, we are really 42 and 40 plus percent of us are women. And at the sea level position, well, half of the sea level people are women.

We are to, you know, half of us are women. So, and, and this of course is we are not there because of positive discrimination in the sense that we are not there because there are quotas to get us on board. We are there because we have skills. And because there were people to recognize those skills, and this is what is very important and where I'm, you know, building up on what Jean Christoff was saying is of course we need to showcase those things and to help people through mentoring, through career development, training, and so on to, you know, to grow.

Because, you know, for me, years ago, when I was coming out of science and you know, of research, which is a very specific, very weird of sorts activity at the university, you know, and I was getting into the private sector, a huge obstacle to me was negotiating a salary, you know, and, and I know that it, it took a mentor, you know, to sit, maybe like to sit down with me and tell me, look, what, what is bugging you exactly? Why don't you want to talk about money? Like it or not? Your salary says, something says a lot about the, the self-worth you, you know, you showcase.

And even if, of course we don't like it, of course I'm much more than the money I'm paid. That's, you know, nobody disputes this, however, you know, money matters in the sense that it is also a way of recognizing expertise. And when you see, when I'm talking about this leaky pipeline, you know, that's what I'm saying. We have people with great expertise with robust knowledge, you know, but they just have this well glass ceiling where they just don't know how to talk about how to, you know, show what they're capable of and how to VO for themselves when they want to change career paths.

Because, you know, like it or not, again, leadership, well management directorship in even leadership positions, that's, that's a different type of job. You know, you don't jump from configuring firewalls or doing reverse engineering to strategic development.

You know, so, and, and, and this is another, you know, thing that I've seen in in recent years is we also tend to, in some situations, put women in, in circumstances, in a difficult setup where they're more or less vote to fail, you know, because they have no help. The situation is dire and just go, they wanted a woman later just go there, you know, and hang in, you know, good luck. But this is not the way things, you know, go that's of course an opportunity, but should that person have had very little training about how to face things, how to communicate with very different people.

This is just bound to fail. That's, you know, no secret. So they are those different things that we need to balance. And that's where, of course, alongside technical training, we do need, you know, career development training, be the mentoring, you know, program internal or external, be specific, you know, training about what is it to actually manage people, to manage activities, to, to endure different type of, of, of cash, you know, in your day life at work. So this is, you know, and of course, to, you know, we shouldn't forget that the pay gap does exist.

Well, the figures I found go anywhere in cybersecurity go anywhere between 14 and 21% of pay up between well, women and men for the same job position, which of course is, I mean, shameful, same responsibilities imply well, same salary, right? Yeah. It should be, should be the case. I just got, I have a look at the clock and we have a little bit more than two and a half minutes left. So I kindly ask you to formulate a couple of key takeaways that you would like to share JC as a man I'm turning to you now, and then Reina as a woman in cybersecurity.

And just to, just to set the scene for that, let me share a personal observation in cybersecurity industry in core cybersecurity industry, service providers and solution providers. Now, what I see is, is a huge growth in the number of female experts on technical level and, and mid-level leadership level. What you're saying about the, the number of female leads in, in, in C-suite is, is actually true. But what I see as, as being in a much worse situation is critical infrastructure, which also has to run digital services and has to have its own cybersecurity department and so on and so forth.

So my personal impression is that that, that kind of cybersecurity outsource cybersecurity industries in a much worse situation or doing, doing much worse than, than we do in course cybersecurity, But It's not based on statistics. It's only my personal view.

And, and there's a first, first key takeaway. I would like you JC to mention at least one thing about how a man should behave in, in, in such a situation.

So, so what do you see as a man, as, as an obstacle that you would, that you should Tackle somehow, that's not an easy question, too difficult. It did catch me by then. It's up on you? I I'm I'm I really think that that to me, many of the problems we are seeing here, I'm going to go back to what I was saying before. I think many of the problems we're seeing here go down to the fact that we.