Karen Jensen

Women in Cybersecurity: Action & Allies Thankfully, we've come far enough that we no longer need to make a case for why gender equality in cybersecurity is important and valuable. But the fact that women still represent less than 20% of the workforce in cybersecurity positions shows we have a long way to go. How do we get there? Achieving gender parity will require two important things: 'action and allies. Even the most well-intentioned organizations may not realize the gender bias inherent in so many aspects of the hiring process or career milestones like performance reviews. 'We need a clear plan of action to bring traditional HR practices in line with the reality of recruiting, hiring, retaining, and promoting top female cybersecurity professionals. We also need allies. We need established leaders in the industry to mentor us, advocate for us, and work on changing attitudes in their organizations at a macro level. How do we find ' or create ' allies? How can we be these allies?

The Annual NICE K12 Cybersecurity Education Conference, supported by the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE), and hosted by iKeepSafe, features timely and thought-provoking presentations that highlight effective collaborations, bold experiments and innovations, and other potentially game-changing methods in support of growing the cybersecurity workforce. Attendees include training and educational leaders from academia, business, and government for two days of focused keynotes, panels, concurrent sessions, and discussions in support of the NICE Strategic Plan.

As a Senior Ambassador for Advancing Trust in AI, I interviewed Nick Panayi from Amelia.ai, a leading platform in conversational AI.