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Solving the cyber workforce puzzle

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Kavitha Mariappan

Kavitha Mariappan

Contributor

Zscaler

Dec 16, 2024

Zscaler EVP, Customer Experience & Transformation Kavitha Mariappan recounts her conversation with CISA Director Jen Easterly and Girls Who Code CEO Dr. Tarika Barrett.

Ernő Rubik said "If you are curious, you will find the puzzles around you and, if you are determined, you will solve them." CISA Director Jen Easterly used that quote in a recent discussion about nurturing talent for the next generation of cyber leaders. She rightly added that the skills needed to solve a Rubik’s Cube–curiosity, determination, and a willingness to look at challenges from multiple angles–are the same skills she looks for when recruiting cyber talent for CISA.

My other guest, Girls Who Code Chief Executive Dr. Tarika Barrett, also knows a thing or two about developing talent. The international non-profit she leads, founded in 2012, has helped 670,000 girls, women, and nonbinary individuals towards careers in tech. She recognizes the importance of exposing girls to puzzles and giving them the opportunity to write a line of code from an early age to foster a lifelong intellectual curiosity.

The cyber-talent gap

The puzzle Jen and Tarika are trying to solve is not insignificant. Women currently make up only around one quarter of the cyber workforce in the U.S., and according to research, there may be as many as 4.8 million unfilled cyber positions worldwide, with a half-million shortfall in the U.S. alone. Bringing more women into the cyber workforce is a big part of the solution.

The pressure is on though: sophisticated attacks by nation-state adversaries like those behind the Salt Typhoon hacks demonstrate that this is not simply a problem of business enablement, but one that’s critical to our national and global security.

You can’t be what you can’t see

The problem starts in the talent pipeline. As Dr. Barrett points out, no young person starts out knowing they shouldn’t be interested in something. But young girls especially face a lack of representation early on that can hinder their desire to grow up to become computer scientists or cybersecurity professionals.

"They're exposed really early right to leaders like Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Neil Armstrong, Steve Jobs... But do they learn enough about incredible female pioneers and problem-solvers like Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, Grace Hopper, Ada Lovelace, or Jean Bartik?" she asked.

The adage ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’ resonates with Jen Easterly too, who enrolled in Westpoint at a time when female cadets were rare.

That underrepresentation is why Girls Who Code seeks to educate girls on these figures early, before introducing them to practitioners later in their work with the organization. Barrett hopes that knowing the history of women pioneers will help prevent some from dropping ambitions for tech careers during the early stages of their education – what she calls the “middle school cliff.” 

"It's when the weight of society's assumptions around identity and intelligence start to coalesce and chip away at a girl's sense of what's possible," she said.
Turning pupils into professionals

Male-dominated computer science courses on college campuses are another early exit point for women aspiring to IT careers. This is a pivotal point where students need to be shown what a career in tech might actually look like.

At CISA, Easterly has made it a priority to hire people from diverse backgrounds and with a range of skillsets. She captured the value of diversity perfectly: "To build the best team, you need to have people who come from different worlds, different backgrounds, different educational experiences. Men, women, different ethnic experiences and backgrounds, and it really is that diversity of how you approach solving a problem that we need more than anything in the world of technology and cybersecurity."

Future-proofing the cyber workforce

The challenges we are attempting to solve don’t stand still though. Technological change means organizations like Girls Who Code must constantly adapt their curriculum to ensure they are preparing students for modern tech jobs. 

AI is the latest wave of disruption to wash over the tech industry, but therein lie opportunities for young people. As Jen noted, AI must be secured, a fact that will lead to whole new fields and broaden the skillsets organizations require to secure their operations. 

"This is not all about computer scientists or a coder,” according to Easterly. “You're going to need people that think differently about who come from fields that seem very different from computer science, perhaps from philosophy or international relations.” 

Ensuring our government and organizations throughout the economy can defend networks and secure data won’t be solved by any one entity. “Future-hedging” our cybersecurity workforce means collaboration among the public, private, and non-profit sectors, and drawing talent from all walks of life. 

There is so much work still to be done, but as Ernő Rubik said: “Our whole life is solving puzzles.” 

To watch the complete conversation, Nurturing the Next Generation of Cyber Leaders, click here.

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