How can IT security become a better place for female experts?
Men often don't trust women to be tech experts and hinder female colleagues with prejudice and ignorance. Avast-CISO Jaya Baloo tells us what needs to change.
(Bild: Gorodenkoff / Shutterstock.com)
More female experts are needed to counter the shortage of specialists in IT security. This was one of the key topics at it-sa 2022 in Nuremberg. During an interview at the conference, Jaya Baloo, CISO of Avast and special keynote speaker at the it sa 2022, spoke with iX about opportunities for women, competition and her own experiences with discrimination.
How do you hold women long-term in STEM jobs? Not only in cybersecurity but in the broader, technical field.
I think that is the same for everyone. You need to give them things to do that they are good at doing. That they are passionate about. Not every part of a job needs to be super fun. But the majority of the time that you're doing it, it should be something that compels you to come back the next day with a positive mindset. And in order to get there, it should be that you find your job interesting. Whether you're learning or doing something new or doing something you are incredibly good at. That quality should be there, because work is where we spend 90 percent of our day. So, with every job, if that type of attraction isn't there, it's not going to hold for men or women for the long term.
Some days are boring or go by very slow. How can you motivate yourself and find the spark to engage yourself?
This is maybe a quirky trait, but I am motivated by impossible challenges. This is also the way that I manage goals we want to achieve. They are usually ambitious goals that are not easily achievable. Rather than demotivating me, this motivates me. When I'm with my own team I need to make sure that we're hitting the right level of it is challenging, but it is not so overwhelming that you feel exhausted before you even start. You need to find the right level of largess to be able to have this thing that you want to do and it's so exciting to do it.
Do you think there is a difference in the way women and men work?
I see in my teams that women often have a stronger desire for being perfect before they even begin execution. I also see that women believe genuinely that they aren't good enough to do something, unless they thoroughly understand it rather than understanding a part of it. And that when they do something, they expect, that others will naturally see what they've created and then reward them accordingly rather than having to tell someone: Look, I just built this. Look what I did. And I see that very differently in most, not all, male colleagues, who will be far more vocal about the thing that they made. For them it is easier to try something new without knowing all of it. They're more likely to go ahead and even potentially not do it perfectly. The execution part is faster with men.
For projects, there is a before, during, and after. What I see before is: men find it more easy to start. During the process there is a lot of busyness and with women, you don't hear how it's going. They think they have to fix everything by themselves. I have no idea why women get this into their heads, I think they're afraid to ask for help. A man more willingly seeks out help during a project. Afterwards, I will hear that the project is done wonderfully more often by men than by women. And again, these are generalities. This is not true in every case and there's always differences.
If I, as a team leader, am aware of these different styles of work, how can I empower people to get started and help them not to worry too much?
I think it's leaving a little bit of room to fail. We don't like failure because it's embarrassing. It's expensive. It leads to potential to not try again because it's discouraging. So I recommend that strong leaders allow fast fail society within their teams. That means you try it. If it doesn't work, you reinvent. If it fails you say: Okay, what didn't work? Analyze what didn't work and try again. Fail again. But fast, failing processes means that you have iteration capacity. Adapt, adapt, adapt. You get better every time.
What I see very often, in corporates especially, is that there is no room for failure. You have these big multi-million dollar projects and they go on for years and suddenly someone realizes: We built something but it has no answer to the original problem that we were trying to address. Now we have a sunk cost dilemma, which is a really big issue in most technical companies. You spent money on a technical solution and halfway because you already spent x million, instead of saying it doesn't work, you keep feeding the beast. You keep spending more money to somehow magically make it work. Help people, in technical groups especially, with a fast fail society. Invent, but don't be afraid to break it, fail it and then reinvent.
According to the course platform Careerera, about 24 percent of the workforce in IT security are women. But at events like it sa, we get the notion they are not as visible as their male counterparts. Do you know why this is the case?
Well, I think there might be a multitude of reasons. The first and foremost thing is, is this a place where you do already have an initial part where those 24 percent are visible and vocal? The answer to that is probably no. Why is that group not as visible, as they should be? Do you notice the 24 percent?
Secondly, there's a saying about boards. If you want more women on boards, you need to see it to be it. So, if there are no women on boards, you're not suddenly going to have an exponential rise. You need to start somewhere to have one role model, which will then have two. A sort of Fibonacci sequence. Eventual expansion to have more. I think that that is the first and foremost reason that the people you do have are not as visible as they should be.
The third thing is that we aren't very encouraging for people in any context to ask questions. To admit their ignorance. To allow them to learn. But that's exactly what you need if you want to have increase of participation.
Teaching STEM at schools
Is there a way to give more people the opportunity to have a head start to get into tech and related jobs?
Honestly, my biggest worry is that we are still not teaching society to be more oriented towards science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. STEM programs are not embedded enough into our school system. I see this with my own children. It hurts me almost physically that their science class doesn't have enough experimentation. There's not enough things to play with and break. There's not enough teachers to take the time to set up an experiment and then just try it out. I think this playful attitude is the thing that we need.
Think about how many pupils in high schools learn how to code. You have French, English, German and Spanish as languages. Why don't we structurally, from a national program say: Everyone, when they graduate high school, must be able to speak at least one computer language. Whether that's Python or C or whatever. You have to have a sort of minimum level. We have this for English. Why shouldn't we have this for coding?
Talking about opportunity: especially women often have to decide between family and their job. How can people combine the wish for children and a family with a high tier, high end job?
I have three children, I've always had high end high tier jobs. I have an amazing husband and we really do approach it as sort of mini corporation. It's a task to do. I do think though that there is this thing that is actually making life more difficult: it is this whole notion of work life balance. I have to tell you that that notion is broken. There is no balance. There's either work or there is life. You are either with your children or you're at the office.
What I try to do is when I am at home, I am fully present. So when my children are talking to me, I don't check my emails in the background. When I'm with them I try to just be with them. To make eye contact, to play whatever we're playing or talk about whatever we're talking about. And that is the only thing I think we should do. And when I'm at work, I am all-in at work. I don't want to hear the "Ah he's hitting me." or "She ate all the peanut butter." I don't have time for that. So I am really all about work or all about life, but I cannot do both at the same time.
Do you think that job sharing is a good way to tackle this problem?
I think that if employers are struggling, there's other things to do. If we were selfless and egoless and everyone could share everything, I think would be beautiful society. Unfortunately it is not the one we live in. So I don't know that I would want to share my job to be very honest with you. That being said, I think that for companies there's other ways to make it more easy for families. I'm not just talking about mothers, I am talking about fathers too. To make it so people are able to have families next to their jobs.
I think the work life balance is almost forced down our throats, thanks to Covid. We were suddenly at home and met our children again. That that ability to be able to work from anywhere that cognizance that it's possible and that it's actually quite healthy to take a walk in the middle of the day with the dog - I think this is a really good thing. Companies should think about how do I make sure that this is facilitated for the long term and wasn't an anomaly during Covid. That we actually say: This is the most intelligent way for people to live on this planet. Let's adopt that. That's the first step.
The second one is perhaps having day care facilities in the office. If you demand that employees are in the office, try to examine how you then accommodate them. What kind of additional facilities do you have in the office to make sure that they can balance job and family well? I genuinely believe that people want to do their best for you. They want to be amazing, not just as employees, but they also want to be amazing mothers and fathers. And so if they want to do their best, why don't we enable them to do just that?
If people want to do their best, they sometimes only look at themselves. How do you perceive competition, especially between men and women in IT Security?
I'm all for competition. I never want to be hired for a job because of the gender I have or the color of my skin. Those are two things, I had no influence over. They were given. Unfortunately, I feel that very often, they worked to my disadvantage. People are less able to see me from my actual qualities and the decisions I make or the way that I think. That's the only thing that I really care about, because that I can influence. So, I'd rather have that they hire me because I'm the best person for the job.
You describe that you don't want to be judged by the color of your skin or your gender. But that probably happened at some point in your career. What helped you in such situations?
The truth is, it very often worked to my disadvantage. I think people automatically assume and that I am a secretary rather than the engineer in the room. They automatically assume that I don't know about the newest greatest thing. I actually think another thing is going to be on me soon, which is ageism. So I think I'm going to have to deal with all kinds of -isms in my life. The sexism, the racism and the ageism. And if we just get rid of the -isms, we would be so much happier. If we could again focus on creating an advanced society, if we could focus on getting off this planet or fixing it. I would rather focus on ideas and things we could do than necessarily the -isms that we unfortunately have labelled to us.
In which way can women assert themselves if they get a hard time by their colleagues, especially male colleagues?
I think the biggest thing is to find your allies. And that's not just women. I don't think that we can fix this problem with just women. Let me be clear: I'm not asking for women only societies where we have only women and their female role models. I don't think it works. I think you need men to be as equally if not more engaged and understand that only with a diverse team you will make the best decisions, the best product, the best team that can adapt to change.
Competition is not just between men and women. Competition is a global phenomenon. If we really want to do better, then we need to get out of our narrow minded naval staring, our: How can I compete with this person? We need to think much bigger. In order to compete on this national or international level, you have to know that those teams are focused on all types of diversit. Not just gender diversity, but even neurodiversity. And in order to get up there, you need to start at the root of the problem.
Ms. Baloo, thank you for your time.
Further information on the role of women for the history of IT is provided by this english interview podcast. The current german issue of MIT Technology Review (08/2022) also describes the broader picture of women in IT and science. (pst)
