Women in IT Security

Posted by William McBorrough | Thoughts | Saturday 5 December 2009 8:26 pm

I recently had a conversation with a former student of mine about the number of women in the Information profession compared to their male counterparts. She has particular interest in web application and I pointed her to the Open Web Application Project (OWASP) which was having its annual conference in the DC area. She actually volunteered at the event (even brought me a nifty OWASP tote bag)and was later lamenting the fact that in most of the workshops, she was the only woman in the room. Without relaying our entire conversation or pontificating on the subject, I was reminded of that conversation twice this week. Once when I had a meeting with Risk Manager at a large corporation who turned out to be a woman and earlier today I came across this paper on Women in IT Project Management while perusing the SANS Institute InfoSec Reading Room. The author’s stated purpose is to ” determine if there is a common skill set, besides technical expertise, which play an important role in thriving within the IT profession” and how “well equipped” women are to take on that role. The paper can be found here.  I thought I’d share.

About William:
William McBorrough is co-founder and President at Washington, DC based Information Technology and Assurance Services Firm Secure Intervention, where he specializes in Assessments, Compliance Readiness, IT and Management and Cloud Computing for both public and private sector enterprises. He is also an Adjunct College Professor teaching Systems Architecture, Networking, Network Attacks and Defense, and Program Development courses. He holds CISSP, CISA, and CEH certifications and is pursuing a Phd in Information Technology with a concentration in Information and Assurance.
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