How Gender Imbalance in Cybersecurity is Backfiring on Women Themselves

25th May is Geek Pride Day. In teen slang, a geek is a techie nerd. As I searched for a version that was more grounded in reality, I came across one on the Cambridge Dictionary’s website. It defines a geek as someone who knows a lot about science and technology, especially computers. Scrolling down to the examples section, this is what I found to be the first sentence from Cambridge English Corpus:

Why aren’t more geeks with gizmos girls?

This made me begin to ponder.

Really, why don’t we see more girls and women in tech? Especially in cybersecurity. That too when the lack of women in cybersecurity is backfiring on women themselves when solutions are getting designed with men in mind!

The lack of women in cybersecurity is particularly worrying because women are more likely to trust strangers online and share personal details on websites, making them more vulnerable to cyber threats. Besides generating awareness, security solutions need to be stronger when it comes to defending girls and women.

Industry-wide gender gap

Cybersecurity is an increasingly critical aspect in today’s digital age. You would think that the online world would provide a better level playing field for women. Unfortunately, that is not at all the case. The gender gap in this industry remains significant and women remain severely under-represented. And their absence is harming the industry’s effectiveness in fighting cybercrime against women themselves.

According to Cybersecurity Ventures Women in Cybersecurity Report 2022, women held just 25% of cybersecurity jobs globally in 2022, and this number is projected to increase to 30% by 2025 and 35% by 2030. While this is an improvement from 20% in 2019 and 11% in 2016, it’s still not enough.

There are already 3.5 million cybersecurity jobs vacant globally. And the total number of available jobs is expected to grow manifold with each passing year. The Internet has made it extremely easy for people to start businesses from anywhere, using just their laptops or even smartphones. Each laptop or smartphone that joins the network is a cybersecurity risk, if not secured properly.

Because any network is as strong as its weakest link.

Gender-imbalanced teams design solutions with men in mind

The lack of representation of women (or for that matter any other minority groups) means that most cybersecurity solutions are designed with men in mind. There have been reports that cybersecurity solutions have found it difficult to identify women’s faces.

An IEEE paper published in 2021 says,

There is consensus in the research literature that face recognition accuracy is lower for females, who often have both a higher false match rate and a higher false nonmatch rate.

A diverse workforce is essential to developing the right solutions and response mechanisms. When a gender-balanced team works on a solution, they identify more problems, loopholes, and areas to work on.

How do we get more women in cybersecurity roles?

The primary reason for this gender imbalance remains the low number of women who apply for cybersecurity roles. When there is an imbalance in the talent pool itself, it is difficult to create a balance higher up.

To encourage more women to apply for cybersecurity roles, businesses need to be more inclusive in the wording of job advertisements, transparent about their hiring process, share the support provided to the female workforce, and train recruitment teams to remove unconscious discrimination during the hiring process.

Also, women need more role models, start believing in their abilities, and fight for at-par treatment in the workplace. Studies have found that men apply for a job when they meet only 60% of the qualifications whereas women apply only if they meet 100% of the stated criteria! This must stop immediately. Combine that with the fact that women have higher levels of education than men in the workplace and you know what women are leaving on the table.

It cannot be done in a day. But a start can be made one woman, one female techie at a time.

It is time to act

Women’s underrepresentation is leading to a one-sided approach to cybersecurity solutions, putting organizations at risk of overlooking potential threats. To address this issue, more must be done to encourage women to enter and excel in the field.

Besides organizations taking active steps to promote diversity and inclusion as part of their culture right from the recruitment process to talent retention, women need to buck up and be intentional about joining the cybersecurity workforce.

-Shweta writes about the impact of technology on people, businesses, and society. She is a contributor for Forbes Advisor and has also been published in Newsweek and Huffington Post.