Dark Reading is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them.Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Database Security
Authentication
Mobile
Privacy
Compliance
Identity & Access Management
Security Monitoring
Advanced Threats
Insider Threats
Vulnerability Management
Comments
Black Hat to Host Discussion on Diversity
Newest First  |  Oldest First  |  Threaded View
raceBannon9901
50%
50%
raceBannon9901,
 User Rank: Apprentice
7/19/2017 | 8:27:03 AM
Re: Ridiculous article, ridiculous symposium
I agree with Kelly. The network defender community has known about this for almost a decade.

 

CSO Magazine said this year that worldwide, there are 1 Million unfilled jobs. When you consider women in the network defender community, we find that they are almost non-existent. Forbes said last year that women make up only 11% of the cybersecurity workforce. If you add a minority to that checklist, say a black or Hispanic woman, that number drops to under 1%.

 

Clearly, if we are to close the gap, women and minorities have to be a source.

 

And we just can't tell our HR departments to hire more. Facebook, Google and others have all tried and failed.

 

Part of problem is that many women and minorities lose interest in STEM (Science, technology, engineering and math) subjects before they get to college. There are many reasons for this that have been well documented: male dominated culture turns women off, popular culture pushes women into "traditional" women's roles, minorities do not have access to strong STEM education, and others.

 

Another part of the problem stems from the cybersecurity old guard (Old white guys). We are the ones doing the hiring. We are the ones that tolerate sexism in the workplace when what we should be doing is stamping it out at every opportunity. We are the ones that are not mentoring the few minorities that do work for us and knocking down the obstacles that prevent them from succeeding.

 

This is the message that the network defender community should be hearing; especially from the old guard. Presenting that information at one of the most well-attended network defender conferences on the planet is a good place to do it.

 

Very respectfully, 

 

 

Rick Howard

CSO

Palo Alto Networks

Full Disclosure: I am on Kelly's panel at Blackhat.
decornel
50%
50%
decornel,
 User Rank: Apprentice
7/18/2017 | 3:50:52 PM
You can not force the horse
This is the same problem in Electrical Engineering.  It's not what people want to do.  This has very little to do with minorities, but this has to do with society.  People want to do what is fun.  In Cyber Security everyone wants to do the cool jobs like research, pen testing, but the industry needs practitioners.  It's not fun, IT IS WORK!!!

So we have what people want which is the people who gravitate to Cyber Security are the people who want to do real Cyber Security WORK!!!

What we need is to make Cyber Security a YouTube channel and everyone would want to do it.  Well, until they have to actually be accountable for parsing the 10's of millions of logs, firewall rules, filters, scripts, and reports that they must do to be a real Cyber Security Engineer.  It takes time to learn to be good, which probably means you had to work real hard for a long time to obtain the skills needed to do the job.

Cyber Security, it's a hot high paying job, because no one wants to do it!  Essentially Cyber Security is the new Garbage collector job; they pay high to lure talented people to do a thankless job that is needed by everyone.

Agree or disagree, but this is not a diversity thing.
Kelly Jackson Higgins
50%
50%
Kelly Jackson Higgins,
 User Rank: Strategist
7/18/2017 | 9:15:34 AM
Re: Ridiculous article, ridiculous symposium
I'm not sure what you mean by "ridiculous." It's a problem when an industry has such dire needs for talent and is missing entire sectors of society. 

And regarding your comment about "college majors that cater to identity politics instead of practical insdustrial demands," there are plenty of non-technical skills also needed in security.

 
ERechts
100%
0%
ERechts,
 User Rank: Apprentice
7/17/2017 | 12:18:44 PM
Ridiculous article, ridiculous symposium
So the newest and fastest moving growth industry in tech lacks proportional minority involvement, and this constitutes a crisis?

I'm impressed by how quickly someone found a profitable career raising "awareness" of the resultant trend of useless college majors that cater to identity politics instead of practical insdustrial demands
KlatnuV505
100%
0%
KlatnuV505,
 User Rank: Apprentice
7/14/2017 | 5:55:00 PM
Missing something
I am somehow missing how this is different from any other employee.  Every employee requires certain things beyond a pay envelope.  


DevSecOps: The Answer to the Cloud Security Skills Gap
Lamont Orange, Chief Information Security Officer at Netskope,  11/15/2019
Attackers' Costs Increasing as Businesses Focus on Security
Robert Lemos, Contributing Writer,  11/15/2019
Register for Dark Reading Newsletters
White Papers
Video
Cartoon Contest
Write a Caption, Win a Starbucks Card! Click Here
Latest Comment: He said the knight shift was the pointy end of the cyber-security spear.  
Current Issue
Navigating the Deluge of Security Data
In this Tech Digest, Dark Reading shares the experiences of some top security practitioners as they navigate volumes of security data. We examine some examples of how enterprises can cull this data to find the clues they need.
Flash Poll
Rethinking Enterprise Data Defense
Rethinking Enterprise Data Defense
Frustrated with recurring intrusions and breaches, cybersecurity professionals are questioning some of the industry’s conventional wisdom. Here’s a look at what they’re thinking about.
Twitter Feed
Dark Reading - Bug Report
Bug Report
Enterprise Vulnerabilities
From DHS/US-CERT's National Vulnerability Database
CVE-2019-19037
PUBLISHED: 2019-11-21
ext4_empty_dir in fs/ext4/namei.c in the Linux kernel through 5.3.12 allows a NULL pointer dereference because ext4_read_dirblock(inode,0,DIRENT_HTREE) can be zero.
CVE-2019-19036
PUBLISHED: 2019-11-21
btrfs_root_node in fs/btrfs/ctree.c in the Linux kernel through 5.3.12 allows a NULL pointer dereference because rcu_dereference(root->node) can be zero.
CVE-2019-19039
PUBLISHED: 2019-11-21
__btrfs_free_extent in fs/btrfs/extent-tree.c in the Linux kernel through 5.3.12 calls btrfs_print_leaf in a certain ENOENT case, which allows local users to obtain potentially sensitive information about register values via the dmesg program.
CVE-2019-6852
PUBLISHED: 2019-11-20
A CWE-200: Information Exposure vulnerability exists in Modicon Controllers (M340 CPUs, M340 communication modules, Premium CPUs, Premium communication modules, Quantum CPUs, Quantum communication modules - see security notification for specific versions), which could cause the disclosure of FTP har...
CVE-2019-6853
PUBLISHED: 2019-11-20
A CWE-79: Failure to Preserve Web Page Structure vulnerability exists in Andover Continuum (models 9680, 5740 and 5720, bCX4040, bCX9640, 9900, 9940, 9924 and 9702) , which could enable a successful Cross-site Scripting (XSS attack) when using the products web server.