Maybe it’s because I’m Canadian, or perhaps because I live in the Dark Side of corporate information security, but I’ve been lucky enough to have 3 great female managers in a row.
Come to think of it, information security tends to be more balanced then a lot of tech areas in my experience. I have mentored a woman who attended her first Defcon. Going into it I was concerned that she’d experience issues related to her gender. According to her nothing could be further from the truth. (I know women whose experiences are different too, but there are at least data points suggesting a more inclusive atmosphere).
I engaged in a thought process about why Information Security/hacking would be different then Software Engineering and IT in this respect (being more accepting of women) I can think of two reasons:
- Most Infosec pros understand people better then your average technical person. Many Infosec jobs are of the “Figure out what the person on the other end of the connection is thinking and abuse the hell out of your knowledge of this fact” variety or “Go into a hostile meeting and convince the people that they’re reading from the book of wrong ideas without pissing them all off too badly” variety. People who are successful in these roles are those who understand BOTH the technology and the people involved. Lots of us are interverts, but fake it better :). I joke I got into Infosec because computers were too predicable, and people are much harder to debug.
- There is a route into the job space that doesn’t get tollgated by the usual suspects. You can enter into a career in infosec from odd directions (one woman who worked for me got drafted from the call center when she was taking night courses to become a DBA, I’ve worked with a number of people who came over from Project Management or Documentation writers, or Risk professionals and got sucked into the profession. We tend to be an eclectic bunch.
I’ve also worked with some great female IT, and Software Engineering leaders over the years too. There’s not enough great technical people out there (as anyone who has EVER been a hiring manager will attest if you run into them at a conference where they’re not using their real name (Hi Defcon!)) to dismiss 51% of the population because they happen to have a larger chromosomal surface area then you do!
