teissTalk: Building competitive advantage with diverse infosec teams

On 30 March, teissTalk host Thom Langford was joined by  Ian Hill, Director of Information & Cyber Security, Upp; Dr Andrea Cullen, Co-Founder/Co CEO, CAPSLOCK; Paul Baird, Chief Technology Security Officer, UK, Qualys

Views on news

Better recruitment techniques can also help avoid unconscious bias or inadvertently discriminating against individuals. The UK Cyber Security Council, for instance, encourages blind recruitment, where the background of individuals is removed. Getting people into the business, though, is only half the battle and needs to be accompanied by an inclusive culture which will keep them there, and in the sector as a whole. As humans, we often confuse unconscious bias with instinct.

 

Recruiters should also be brave enough to choose candidates who will challenge them and point out things that they wouldn’t otherwise notice. Recruiters, however, may also wonder what they could do differently when no applications from women are submitted for years.

 

The reason for this, however, can be that they can’t picture themselves working in a male-dominated space. 

 

But the explanation that less women want to work in the cyber security space than men can’t be completely ruled out, either. It’s important to remember, that cyber security isn’t only about tech skills. Also, selecting diverse candidates only because you have to would be counterproductive. Although choosing the woman between two similar candidates can break the cycle and attract more women or diverse candidates to the company. 

 

Expanding your talent pool to gain competitive advantage

Diversity brings in different ways of thinking when fighting off bad actors. People with neurodiverse thinking, for example, tend to have very strong analytical thinking.

 

Another problem is that neurodiverse people in security roles are often pigeonholed, which can stall their career progress.

 

In empowering diverse cyber security talent to fulfil their potential, leaders and good managerial skills also have a crucial role to play, although remote work made executives’ jobs harder than it was in an on-site office environment. 

The panel’s advice

Always have alignment between your talent management strategy and business goals. 

Don’t keep SOC teams behind closed doors but bring them out to the IT floor and get other teams too involved in cyber and infosec in the context of their own roles. 

Cyber needs to become more transparent and federated across the business.