CyberWire Daily - Women in Cybersecurity 2017: A CyberWire Special Edition [Special Edition]

Episode Date: April 12, 2017

The 2017 Women in Cybersecurity conference was held in Tucson Arizona, and the CyberWire was on hand to cover the event. We spoke with a variety of cyber security professionals, at different stages of their careers. We covered some of their career journeys and professional insights on our daily podcast, and in this special edition learn why a women in cybersecurity conference is more important than ever, what they wish they knew when they were starting out, as well as some advice for the men in the industry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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what they wish they knew when they were starting out, as well as some advice for the men in the industry. Stay with us. This is my first time at the WESIS event and I'm loving the energy from these young women in particular. That's Michelle Dennedy. She's chief privacy officer at Cisco. She was a keynote speaker at the event. They are so positive in their own ability to make change, of their flexibility to say, should I start here, assuming that I'm going to go there and there and there. It's a very hostile work environment still, and not always overt.

And in fact, I think the most pernicious problems are not overt. Like, you know that if somebody acts like a jerk, you know, maybe they won't do something right away. And we've seen that in some of our more popular things going on in the Valley right now. But it's the things that people don't intend. It is the, I'm more comfortable talking with men, and so I'm only going to go out to dinner with men. I'm not going to have dinner alone with a woman because there's some sort of implication that that's a sex thing,

which is ridiculous. And then the only person who gets one-on-one time with those leaders has to be gender, you know, whatever matches. And I think that that hurts the men and it hurts the women. Those things exist, whether they're overt or if they're in the back of our heads. And so I think that's just something to be incredibly mindful of and be very aware of our own biases and make a point of all of us particulars who are in the privileged position of leadership to force yourself to go to that uncomfortable awkward thing with someone that doesn't have a lot in common with you and say you know I'm still your

leader too how do I help you how do I help you succeed what do I help you succeed? What do you need? What are your dreams and aspirations? And it's fascinating because all the stereotypes are there for a reason. Like you'll get the guy who's like, I'm ready to be CEO. And by gosh, he's been out of college for two years. You'll get the woman who's been doing a job for 20 years. And she's like, do you think I need another graduate degree? And you're like, no, you should have my job. So I think, you know, it's not always easy, but it's very rewarding. Amanda Russo is a malware researcher at Endgame. So here, you know, I can give a workshop and break it all down to basic things, make things purple and pink so they're more interesting,

and try to get their hands dirty and see that it's not scary, it's not hard. You just need to slowly grasp at the idea. I think this event's awesome, quite frankly. So I mentioned to you on our walk over here that I don't get a chance to go to too many events like this. We're usually in business meetings, talking to executives, educating them on problems and solutions. That's Wendy Whitmore. She's a global partner and lead at IBM's X-Force Incident Response and Intelligence Services. And to get to kind of speak to college

students, young women who are embarking on their careers, is really exciting for me personally, because you can sense kind of the energy that they have, the excitement, the motivation, and just thinking about these are things that not only did they not exist like this, this group, for example, I believe was created three or four years ago. It certainly didn't exist when I was in college, but it didn't even exist five years ago. So seeing the growth and the conference continue to grow in numbers year over year is really exciting because more young women are going to hear about it, hopefully get involved, and corporations will continue to sponsor and even more so help grow the event, which is pretty neat.

Something that came up over and over in my conversations with women at the conference was the importance of good communications. So often it's just not there, and that can be a big barrier. So I asked, what do you wish the men in cybersecurity knew about the women in cybersecurity? Svetla Walsh and Deja Baker are midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy. We hear from Svetla first. Give us a chance. Like, I know everyone's going to come in a room with maybe some assumptions, but you know, you don't know what you don't know. And I think you should go in with an open mind.

Open mind is like the big thing. I love solving problems, and that's the thing I love about programming is that we don't care who's working to solve the problem. The word collaboration means anybody that can help give their input to help solve the problem. When we're looking at a problem in a program, looking for the bug, the whole idea is like, I want to be able to contribute, and I want you to know that I want to help solve the problem too.

Yeah, and I think that relates to, like, just to realize that diversity is important because we all have different experiences, and these experiences allow us to problem-solve in different ways that will help solve the problems that we face in the world today. And I think just to be open-minded, like Svetla said, to be open-minded to realize that people, that we're just not a part of a big group. Don't label someone as just being a woman. Maybe I'm a person and I have my own skill sets and I want you to see me for the abilities that I have.

That she can create algorithms, that she's efficient at programming, that I am well communicating the problem. That if somebody isn't as technical, but they're the one pushing the policy, that I know how to speak to them in a way that they would understand. And just looking at the skills, and I've always been taught, my dad has always taught me, told me to look at the strengths of somebody. You know, we talk about like when you're working with a team, you know, it's easy to pick out the weaknesses or who's the weak link. But he said, no, look at the strengths of the person.

And then you find out their strengths, and then you take those strengths and put them together and the thing is cyber security is all about solving problems solving malware exploits and like we need to be open-minded and be ready to solve these problems and that's just coming in with the hey who can help contribute to the problem solving and then going from there you know we are on par with everyone else it's it's just one of those things where you can't take someone for granted that's amanda going from there. Amanda Russo, Endgame You know, we are on par with everyone else. It's just one of those things where you can't take someone for granted. That's Amanda Russo from Endgame. And that's the kind of belief that I have.

Even though I know some people are not socially able to communicate their ideas properly, doesn't mean I'm gonna, you know, judge them right away, right? I have to assume this person is my equal and they have to tell me what they bring to the table. And it's not about, you know, me having to change myself socially. It's me having to gain trust and respect based on the evidence and data I provide to support my arguments or claims or any type of research. I mean, it's the same with everyone else. If you're a guy between a guy, you're going to support your claims based on evidence. It's the same with a female.

Sometimes we might try a little bit harder to get past our gender bias. I think that if you think that this is a women problem, you're part of the problem. That's Michelle Dennedy from Cisco. If you think that women are trying to threaten your job, they're not. Life is threatening your job. Innovation is threatening your job. Globalization, polarization, socialism, nationalism, those things, all of these great forces are threatening your job. It's not because someone is gendered. I think that if every single person, and we have, we have a program at Cisco right now called Multiply Diversity, and it just came out of

like a cocktail conversation that people had at Mobile World Congress, which I think is excellent. That's how things are supposed to happen. And they said, what if every single person, men and women, picked one diverse candidate from whatever diversity you feel most passionate about, race, ethnicity, economic circumstances, geography, gender, and if every single one of us picked one person not to mentor but to sponsor, to push that person to take those next risks or pull them up when you see them lagging, if every single person did that, it would only take half a generation to get to the place where we have enough competent people working in a respectful environment

where all we're doing is innovating and creating and sort of bringing our best selves to work. Kathleen Smith is chief marketing officer for CyberSecJobs.com and ClearedJobs.net. I've been very fortunate that I'd say 95% of the men that I've met in cybersecurity have really been very supportive and respectful. Just like there are women who are not that very great, there is a small percentage of men who still don't see the need to treat women with respect. There is a big movement on that. I really appreciate the family and community feel that I feel at any of the B-Sides events that I've

gone to and I've been part of. I think that reinforces in my mind that it's not that bad. There are a lot of bad apples. And I think that there are enough of us women who know who the bad apples are that we just warn other women, you know, stay away from them. But there are so many phenomenal men in the cybersecurity community. What's interesting is that so many of them are very supportive on Twitter. And I really do appreciate Sushi Dude and a variety of others who have been raising the importance of making sure that women are treated with respect and that they do take center stage when they have something to say that's of value to the community. There are certainly things along the way, being a woman,

that you're going to get lewd comments made or inappropriate remarks, but I don't feel like I've ever been discriminated against because I'm a woman, and I feel like I've had a lot of fantastic mentors, and most of them have been men. I've been a lot of fantastic mentors, and most of them have been men. Wendy Whitmore from IBM. I've been in some leadership groups where they send executives at my level and bring us in from all over the world to go through leadership training. And as part of that, I've kind of shared my upbringing and how I got to where I'm at. And every time I've done that, I've had so many men that have come up to me

who I wouldn't have necessarily thought, you know, that's the audience I'm kind of speaking to, but have said, Hey, you know what? Now that you told me the impact that your dad had on you growing up, I've been coaching my son's baseball team, but you know what? I'm going to get more involved in my daughter's sports team as well, because I see the impact that it had and the positive influence that I can be on her. And I think that's one of the things that's really resonated with me that I've felt really surprised by and very positively encouraged by and that's probably one of the things that I would encourage more men to realize. You know just how much of an impact it's not just

about necessarily the women that are in the workforce with you now but what impact can we have on future generations. Too often the women's cybersecurity issue becomes something that is a problem for women to solve. It's also a problem for men to solve. That's Andrea Little-Limbago. She's chief social scientist at Endgame. Especially in this field, most of the executives are men.

So in addition to this being supportive vocally, that's just basically, that's almost the lowest bar that I have is sort of vocal support in that area. We need men at all levels to be more, to be allies. So that's sort of the hokey phrase, it's male allies. We need many, many more of the men to be male allies, which doesn't mean just saying, okay, of course we support diversity, we support women, and kind of stopping there. You need to actually do more than that. So it's not just on the women to actually help increase the diversity and the representation.

And being an ally can be anything from on social media, like retweeting something that someone else does as far as helping show their expertise in that area. So being a sponsor of them. If you're in meetings, all the data shows that when women have an idea, it usually tends to be taken over by someone else

and they get the credit for it. Instead of that, if you see that happening, step in and say, well, that idea that Lindsay said, she's the one who actually, and be vocal in that area in helping sponsor and promote the women. It doesn't mean we're not lowering the bar. We're not expecting to be treated differently. But just help be a much more explicit sponsor in that area. And really, it's amazing just those little aspects like that can really go a long way

to help elevate and amplify the voice of the women. And that's really what we need. Because again, we're only 10% of the workforce. We can't do it alone. We need that 90% to also help advocate. And I think that's in many places where we've been lacking so far. There are a lot of male allies, a lot of great male advocates. We need more. What's in it for them? That's a great question.

Companies are groups that actually want to innovate more and get more creative. You need different perspectives coming in. That for sure is something that comes along with it. When your entire team is trying to come up with some new solution and you all have the exact same background, you all do the exact same things and all look the same, you're probably going to come up with the same idea. So you need a diversity across. I always talk about it. It's across the board.

It's different disciplines. It's different ethnic groups, religious groups, gender. It's all those kinds of diversity that's important. And so for one thing, they'll come up with better solutions. And so if you actually care about the work you're doing, which I think a lot of us, most of us in cybersecurity do because it is so important, you're going to find more creative and more innovative solutions. For the corporate level, why you should care, it's ROI. Companies that have more diverse representation on the boards, on teams, and managers across the board tend to do it better.

And so companies will do better, teams will be more innovative, and honestly, if you look at the cybersecurity challenge, the attacks are going on daily. We see this going on. Clearly, we're not doing our job yet as far as helping provide better defenses in that area. So let's bring in the entire population and help solve that problem, and maybe we can really leapfrog into some much more innovative solutions. I think I would tell my younger self to believe in yourself more.

Like I'm going to use this conference as an example. So Savetlyn went to the Grace Hopper Conference. I didn't even apply to that because I was like, I have to write an essay, they're going to look at my credentials and everything. I might not get accepted. And then I had a talk with a professor. My professor was like, Baker, why didn't you apply for this? Why didn't you do this?

And I was like, well, you know, I might not get it. He was like, well, the worst thing they can tell you is no. And I wish I could tell my younger self that because I feel like I missed out on opportunities I could have had if I, just because I didn't I didn't apply to things I didn't apply I like now I apply to everything I I'm like okay opportunity opens up I'm gonna try for it because worst thing they'll tell me is no I would say tell my young self that you're you're doing just fine um it's I was very insecure and I still like when the decisions I make going forward, I still kind of get insecure, but it didn't really help when people would think that, when there's not a lot of support from

your peers that say that, wow, you seem really ambitious, do you want to go to college? And you seem really ambitious that you want to go pursue technology and like, I felt like I was always questioned, why, why, why, why are you doing this? And if I spoke up, it was perceived as being annoying or talking too much. But I really want people to understand that. I really have these goals and dreams I want to accomplish. And just to tell myself, keep doing what you're doing, because the thing is, you will get them.

Because I keep putting myself out there, and people see that, and they want to give you opportunities. And that's the thing,, I was doing just fine, and not to be as insecure as I was growing up, because I was really insecure. Don't worry about what other people think. Just keep doing what you're doing, because all that matters is what you do,

and more so than, you know, what you're saying at that point in time. Your actions speak a lot louder than what you're wearing or what you say that may hurt you in the end. Part of the reason why I come to this conference is I talk to a lot of the younger women here and help encourage them because we do need women to keep pursuing this field and want to stay in it. The mission is essential. I mean, you're getting back to the geopolitical aspect of it. This is one of the most challenging fields of our time and impactful. So the thing that probably, you know, own your experience and own your expertise.

I think that women especially, even if they've gone through however many years of education, they still, you know, will still portray it like other people may know more in the room. And so own your expertise. Be more vocal about some of those aspects of it. Do all those things, you sit at the table, some of the basic things that we hear, but also you reach out and network more and don't be afraid to do that. That's especially hard for introverts, which a lot of us in this field are. It's not natural for us to just naturally go up and talk, but networking is almost underrated.

Everyone talks about networking and the importance of that. I feel like they think about it that way more from sales or something like that, but networking is almost underrated everyone talks about networking the importance of that and I feel like they they think about that way more from like a sales or something like that but networking is really important for just building a community so that when you do you know when you do struggle or what you do you hit some roadblocks you've got a community to actually help build you up and help keep you within the field and so for me now like over the last year one things I've been focusing on is expanding out and bringing building up my network of both men and women that I know who work in various domains, industry, academics, government. So that when any of us do actually start, you know, hit one of the challenges that we're all going to hit, and we heard that in the keynote, you have a community there to support you. And so that's really, really important.

But we need to be more vocal. I wish I'd started going out speaking and writing a lot sooner. And so that's really, really important. But we need to be more vocal. I wish I'd started going out speaking and writing a lot sooner. One of the things that I did when I was younger, and I think a lot of people do, is kind of underestimate themselves. You know, you might sit in a room in college, and you don't quite understand what the professor is communicating, but you don't really want to ask the question because you're kind of looking around and you're like,

well, everyone else must get it. They're not asking these questions, right? And I would do that in my early days of my career too, where I felt like, oh man, everyone around me, they know what's going on. I'm the only one who doesn't quite understand this. So I'm not going to ask the question. I'm not going to give my perspective on this because not going to, you know, give my perspective on

this because maybe it's not right. And as I have gotten older, I've realized how important it is to share your voice. It's certainly important to not speak up when you know that you don't know what's going on, right? But as you get older, I think your perspective can change and realize that, wow, my voice is actually important. I do have something to add to this. And I've stopped underestimating myself so much. And I think that's important, especially for young women to really understand and realize that, you know, hey, you should have a voice at the table. You know, as long as you're working hard and doing great work, make sure that you're not hampering your own abilities and your own potential by underestimating yourself.

and your own potential by underestimating yourself. I was very involved with the hard sciences, and I had a lightning bolt go off, and I did complement that with social science, so law and society and biochemistry. But like many stories you hear, I would have a voice in the room, and people would not listen to my voice.

And then I would then distrust my voice that I was not saying the right thing even though I knew I was saying the right thing and I have learned that I have a good voice I have a strong voice and I have something to add I have value to add to a conversation not that I'm cocky but that I can really change the conversation. And I think that that is something I wish I had maintained throughout most of my, you know, younger career. There were too many times when people told me that I couldn't say anything, to shut up, to I didn't know what I was thinking, I obviously wasn't smart. And having the conviction and the confidence that my voice did have value and to keep talking. And that was both in personal relationships and professional.

I think if you knew everything that you learn over a course of a lifetime, you'd be kind of shocked at your own audacity. I never dared to dream as big as I've lived so far. It's been kind of a trip. I think if I would just say, you know, first of all, first of all, I'd be like, okay, sunscreen, honey, that, that is a thing, uh, you know, and, and you should probably jog more. And, um, that guy in 96, you probably shouldn't have gone out with him. But other than that, I think I would say the same thing of just stay curious, keep your eyes open. My grandmother died when she was 96,

and my grandfather preceded her four days earlier. We went to the funeral. My older daughter was maybe 10 at the time. I'll never forget it because grandma just kind of like, you could tell in her mind she'd already decided to like go with him. And she reached out and she just put her hands on my daughter's face. And she said, I've lived almost 100 years. I've seen so many wondrous things.

Just keep your eyes open. And I think if I could have that advice, that's all I would do is just continue to have that wonder and continue to keep my eyes open. My thanks to Svetla Walsh and Deca Baker, Amanda Russo, Wendy Whitmore, Kathleen Smith, Andrea Little-Lambago, and Michelle Dennedy for taking the time to speak with us, and to everyone who organized and attended the Women in Cybersecurity Conference for being so welcoming. The Cyber Wire podcast is produced by Pratt Street Media. Our editor is John Petrick. Social media editor is Jennifer Iben. Technical editor is Chris Russell. Our editor is John Petrick. Social media editor is Jennifer Iben.

Technical editor is Chris Russell. Executive editor is Peter Kilpie. And I'm Dave Bittner. Thanks for listening. Thank you. security solution trusted by businesses worldwide. ThreatLocker is a full suite of solutions designed to give you total control, stopping unauthorized applications, securing sensitive data, and ensuring your organization runs smoothly and securely. Visit ThreatLocker.com today to see how a default deny approach can keep your company safe and compliant.