Cyber Women Ireland – Diver{Se}curity Project

By Pia Stavrianos. Pia is a business marketing student with an interest in all things creative such as writing and graphic design. She has found a new interest in sustainability and artificial intelligence while working with the Irish Tech News team

Cyber Women Ireland (CWI) are a women-led organisation. Their mission is to encourage the advancement and number of women in the Irish security sector and security community. This is done through exchanging information and the cultivation of productive relationships. They wish to address the issues within their sector and close the gender gap.

Cyber Ireland has realised that this industry has rapidly grown in the last 5 years. The Cyber Ireland 2021 Cyber Skills Report shows that 27% of companies have difficulties in retaining females. This is a major issue for this sector.

How to combat this? – Introducing the Diver{Se}curity Project.

To further develop Cyber Women Irelands mission, the Diver{se}curity Project was developed by the CWI committee. The aim of this is to assess the cybersecurity landscape in Ireland as it relates to equity, inclusion, diversity and belonging in the work and jobs marketplace.

It was named Diver{Se}cruity as they are directly aiming to promote diversity in the security sector. The thought process of the project is to bring awareness to these issues and shine a light on the presence of cognitive dissonance within cyber companies concerning diversity as 44% of cyber organisations have no diversity programmes.

This project is made up of a survey, a report, and a toolkit that organisations can adapt to suit.

To get a better understanding of each element, I spoke with Loren O’ Driscoll – project contributor with Cyber Women Ireland. Her in-depth knowledge of this project has given valuable insight into each element as she joined the project team in the creation of the Diver{Se}curity Project.

As we begin to explore each element of the project, I must first wonder what exactly is the purpose of the Diver{Se}curity survey?

“The survey has been created to gather information on cyber employee experiences and how we can make a positive change. The data collected from the participants will be analysed and discussed in our final report. The aim of the survey is to gather intel on the voice of the sector in Ireland and shine a light on any areas that may be lacking, be that the retention of talent or organisations needing to be more thoughtful about diversity and inclusion.”

Can you give me a taste of what people can expect from participating in the survey?

“Without going into too much detail the survey includes the interview/hiring process, covering participants personal experiences. Pandemic related occupational burnout, here we look to see are your companies supporting you- if not, how can they.

Company representation – are there diverse panels within your company, if so, have you been given the opportunity to go on a panel, etc. There are also a number of other elements to it but those are the ones that stand out to me right now”

This survey was released on 18th March- If this applies to you in your role, and it is of interest, you can take the survey here.

The Toolkit is another major element to this project- can you tell me exactly what it is?

“The toolkit is a product of the survey and the report. It was created to provide tools, tips, and guidelines for companies to adopt to make their organisations a more inclusive space that understands and welcomes people from diverse backgrounds and embraces current movements to make their company a place where their talent wants to stay and grow”.

Joanne O’ Connor, the founder of Cyber Women Ireland, has said that the aim of the toolkit is: “to build a more attractive industry for newcomers to be drawn to, an industry that is welcoming and inclusive that aids people to stay and an industry that promotes, highlights and champions the people who make it great.”

The toolkit is broken up into 7 chapters which include, but are not limited to- working parents, company representation, and occupational burnout.

Loren has explained that; “each of these chapters is then broken into 3 levels within the toolkit going from things companies and individuals can do right now, up to long term culture change goals companies can strive to achieve.”

An example of this can be seen below:

More information on the toolkit can be viewed here.

All of this combined Cyber Women Ireland hope to create a more diverse cyber industry in Ireland while combatting the issue of cognitive dissonance within cyber companies in relation to diversity, as 27% of cyber organisation have all-male cybersecurity teams and 42% have significantly more men than women. Unfortunately, this may be directly linked to the 30% turnover rate in the cybersecurity industry due to family changes that we have seen from the 2021 Cyber Skills Report.

As stated by Loren above, the results of the survey will result in the first-ever Cyber Women Ireland Diver{Se}curity report. This will be released once all the results for the survey have been compiled and analysed. Watch out for this to be released here

Cyber Women Ireland will continue to strive to improve gender balance in the cybersecurity sector which will be a benefit to all talent and the Cyber industry within Ireland as a whole.