Diversity – How can it help your organisation?

• By Craig Ford, AISA Brisbane chair and 2020 Cyber Security Professional of the Year
 

I HAVE been thinking a lot lately about what can I do to make a difference in the industry. I see some consistency in security as a whole with it still being very heavily filled with white middle-aged men. Now, don’t get me wrong, that is great, they love our industry and I want us to focus on that first (after all, I am one of them). We really do have a lot of great members of our industry and we don’t want to exclude these people. We just want to open the door for others as well so together we can make it better.

I do not want to lecture everyone about diversity, why we are all doing it wrong, that’s not true. We are doing some things well. We should be proud of that. Now let's take it up a step with some ideas of how I think we can improve the diversity in the industry and our organisations.

Spread the word

Firstly, why don’t we all widen our base, talk to females in your lives, your organisations about what you do, talk to your daughters, your friends about our industry? Spread the word of how great a career could be in this space, it is not all men, we have room for everyone. Different ages, different sexes, sexual orientation, racial backgrounds, neurodiversity - it doesn’t matter we need everyone.

Why do we need everyone, it's simple. Well, at least I think it is. In ICT security we have an avalanche of different threats, different problems that we need to solve. If you have an organisation, an industry with a diverse range of opinions, experiences the solutions, the ideas that could come forth are going to be very different than if all we have is middle-aged men. I don’t feel that there is anything wrong with middle-aged men, I am one. I think I am reasonably educated, pretty open-minded and honestly very happy to challenge norms that I don’t agree with.

I don’t have all the answers though I know that and together we can find them, men, women, Indigenous, non-Indigenous, we can all make the industry better. We can all figure out how we can do better, find a different way to win this cyber battle we are all fighting.

Huge rewards

So, we now all agree by expanding diversity in our teams it will help make our teams better but how do we get all of these individuals into the industry now that we have convinced them that a career with us is a great idea.

How about you take them under your wing, help guide them on their journey, you don’t have to make it some official mentor/mentee type thing, just help them on the path. Help them learn about the best skills or areas for them and help them get in front of opportunities that could get them started. It won't take much effort but the rewards for us all will be huge. It will probably help you feel great because you are doing something, even if it is just something small to help someone on their journey.

Plain speaking

That’s a win-win, isn’t it? You could help make the industry better, potentially help your organisations be better and you get to all feel good about doing it. So go start some conversations (Minus all the jargon please, you don’t want their eyes to all glaze over before you start. You all know what I am talking about, that look when you start to get too technical and they zone out).