International Women’s Day provided a rare opportunity to openly and honestly probe some of the challenges and opportunities for women of diverse background and cultures to build a career in cyber security.
Emi Palmor, Israeli lawyer and senior civil servant – who, among her many other contributions, served as Director General of the Ministry of Justice – led a panel discussion on the topic of “Men and Women as Allies” with the participation of CyberProof’s CEO Tony Velleca, President Yuval Wollman, and Director of Global Service Delivery Angela Schoeman.
The conversation explored some of what’s unique to cyber security and how these aspects have an impact on women working in the industry. We discussed how many cyber professionals move into the private sector from the military – and touched on the advantages of the fact that you don’t need an academic degree in the sciences to succeed in cyber. Both issues have an impact in terms of the participation of women in the field.
CyberProof’s staff participated in the virtual event and asked questions throughout the discussion which were answered in turn by Emi, Tony, Yuval, and Angela. Topics covered included the desire of CyberProof’s leadership to provide opportunities for all CyberProof’s employees regardless of gender, and their interest in working to ensure that our corporate environment and policies support the professional development of women in cyber.
We look forward to leveraging this event as a springboard for exploring new ways of advancing women’s careers and further examining questions of gender in the workplace.
...we want to be a company that works closely with our clients, we want high-touch engagements, and we want to build relationships based on empathy-and I see women as having strength in terms of those skills.
Yuval concluded the panel by saying, “I’d like to recruit more women globally. Cyber security talent is in scarcity; we need more talent. It’s hard to recruit.”
Yuval continued, “The more women join us, the more diverse we will be, and the more possible it will be to accommodate and build some of the models we discussed – to internalize some of the concerns raised by women employees during this discussion, and to meet those concerns.”
Interested in pursuing a career in cyber? We’d love to hear from you! Check out the career opportunities here at CyberProof.