As we in the industry frolic our way through this summer—also noting that Grace Hopper 2024 registration has been released—our theme remains the same: where are all the women in cybersecurity? I could go on and on about how the tech industry, in general, severely lacks diversity across the board, but I’ll dig the knife in a little deeper and say this: the women who have made it in the industry have experienced so much exclusion and prejudice that they leave early on OR they tell other aspiring cybersecurity professionals to stay away.

And I don’t blame them. I don’t blame them because who wants to come into work day after day being passively-aggressively told that they have to work three times as hard to prove they are equal to their peers? Who wants to come into work knowing that respect is considered more important than technical qualifications?

ISC2 released a survey with over 14,000 participants, and only 17% of them were women working in the industry. In this same survey, 11% of the participants reported that there were no women on their security teams. Of those 17%, how many do I think have experienced some form of prejudice? Probably all of them.

Enough spiciness. While seasoned female professionals can unintentionally gatekeep the profession from future hopefuls, I can say with confidence that they didn’t start out this way. Many of them come in with the intention of networking and spreading more information in the hopes that more women will join. Whether they’re in Cloud Services or IT, more often than not, these same professionals have encouraged at least one person to consider joining the security industry. I’d also like to flip the coin and say that because of these challenges, there are others who are more motivated to attract diverse candidates. At the end of the day, our industry is wildly understaffed, and the lack of inclusion is a major symptom of it.

If you’re wondering if you should join the security industry, I’m here to tell you that yeah, you should absolutely do it. If you want to help people and secure the internet at the same time, this is the best place to do it. I have to be frank; you’re not going to be stopping hackers all the time, but the satisfaction of knowing you’re helping protect people is definitely there. And if you’re looking for numbers, there are now more women holding executive titles that have a greater impact on things such as hiring initiatives, and over half of the survey participants held formal security titles.

Overall, the journey is difficult—damn near impossible—but not improbable. There’s a certain kind of confidence you gain when facing such adversity, and I’ve used the experience as armor for all my personal journeys. If you can do this, you can damn near do anything.