teissTalk: Building a diverse InfoSec team and bringing value to the organisation

teissTalk host Geoff White was joined by Sherron Burgess Senior Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer, BCD Travel; Regina Bluman, Co-founder of Respect in Security; www.linkedin.com/in/victoriavanroosmalen">Victoria van Roosmalen, CISO of Coosto.

Views on news

According to a report by California-headquartered talent data consolidation platform Hiretual, organizations are doing little to boost diversity within their software teams with just 15 per cent of searches applying a diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) filter to find developers from various ethnic backgrounds, and with only 15 per cent of searches on the platform made for female candidates specifically. 

Even organisations that seemingly do care about diversity may be hostile to diverse talent at the workplace citing tokenism and questioning diverse recruits’ skills and merits rather than being inclusive with them. Some of these diverse talents will leave the company before they could bring real value.  To counterbalance this trend, it’s key that employees with diverse backgrounds find their affinity groups inside – but also outside – the company and get some encouragement from like-minded individuals.