Reviewing the article published in Forbes magazine in March: "The road to gender equality, a struggle in danger" written by Angela Angulo and in the context of Women's Day, it is inevitable not to stop at the argument that after the pandemic the Davos forum calculated that to close the gender gap we will take 135.6 years.
In our industry, that of cybersecurity, the talent shortage is a major issue as there are millions of vacancies available, however it is interesting to see how the talent shortage decreased and women went from occupying 11% of positions in 2013 to 25% according to the 2020 edition of the Women in Cybersecurity report, by the security certifications organization (ISC)2.
Our contribution
For us, it is key to understand that change is born at home. A clear example is A3Sec Colombia, the process has been natural and the report to the Director is 66% women and 33% men. This executive line led by great professionals shows us that we made the right decision, as they have been generating growth of over 40% year after year for 3 years.
The revenue team, which includes the commercial, marketing and pre-sales areas, has a balance of 50% women and 50% men. Female leadership has led to a high performance team.
In our industry, the technical areas are where the imbalance is usually found, it is worth noting that in technology the gap is very large, and if we focus on cybersecurity it is even larger; 10 years ago finding a female CISO leader was like finding the treasure at the end of the rainbow. However, and to our pride, we find today in A3Sec the following distribution:
Field |
Women (%) |
Men (%) |
Ciencia de Datos |
33% |
66% |
CSVD - BlueTeam & Hunters |
63% |
37% |
Advisory - CISOs y Client Success |
46% |
54% |
DevOps |
50% |
50% |
Including the director, we have reached the great achievement of having a gender balance in the technical area of 50% women and 50% men.
Although the challenge of attracting women to cybersecurity has not been easy, we have achieved it with a clear definition from the top management of A3Sec Group. Today we are proud to say that we achieved it and that those 135.6 years were much less with the conviction of the important contribution of each of our digital warriors.