In celebrating International Women’s Day today, it’s important to note the ongoing imbalance in our sector – cybersecurity. Only around 16% of the UK’s cyber workforce are women, alongside 17% from ethnically diverse backgrounds, and 9% neurodiverse individuals. We could not find data about non-binary or transgender individuals in the cyber workforce.
So, today, we want to highlight some of the brilliant women, communities of women and resources in the cybersecurity industry:
Women in Cybersecurity
Nasrin Rezai
Nasrin is SVP, Chief Information Security Officer at Verizon with over 20 years of experience. She is a global technology risk and security executive with a track record of creating formalised, comprehensive risk management strategies and processes. She has expertise in both strategy development and execution for large-scale security architecture, governance, operation and compliance.
Lindy Cameron
Lindy is the CEO of the National Cyber Security Centre. She became NCSC CEO with more than two decades of national security policy and crisis management experience. She was previously a Director-General in the Northern Ireland Office and at the Department for International Development (DFID).
Diana Waithanji
Diana is a Technical Committee Member – IT Security at Kenya Bureau of Standards and Product Digital Compliance (AFRIKA KOMMT! Fellow) at SAP. She believes that data security is a human right, and is an experienced conference speaker with the objectives of creating more user awareness on cybersecurity, giving technical talks, and encouraging more women in leadership and politics.
Marnie Wilking
Marnie is the Global Head of Security and Technology Risk Management (CISO) for Wayfair. She has directed information security and multi-discipline risk management programmes for more than 15 years across multiple industries, providing a unique set of skills and experience to improve risk outcomes and enable businesses to incorporate risk management while maintaining speed and agility.
Resources
Cyber Security Challenge UK – Women in Cyber
Read stories from women working in the UK’s cybersecurity industry and learn more about their experiences, as well as their advice for women considering working in the cyber industry.
InfoSec Girls
InfoSec Girls’ main objective is to get women curious about information security. The organisation aims to do this by encouraging more women to actively participate in events like security conferences and community meet-ups.