.jpg)
SheCanCode's Spilling The T
SheCanCode's Spilling The T
Why the Cybersecurity industry is cracking without enough women
An organisation in the United Kingdom is being attacked on average 854 times per week in the last 6 months, that makes it a prominent business risk, not just an IT issue. When you pair that with the impact just one breach can have, from mass amounts of personal data lost to large-scale disruption to our essential services, you begin to paint a picture of just how crucial defending against cybercriminals is.
Currently, the industry is struggling to keep up with the quantity of attacks as a result of insufficient talent to help support businesses and drive innovation. This is why Dr. Dorit Dor, Chief Technology Officer at cybersecurity company Check Point Software is spreading the word about why it’s essential to engage young women about how exciting a career in STEM can be, offering advice from someone who has climbed the ladder herself.
SheCanCode is a collaborative community of women in tech working together to tackle the tech gender gap.
Join our community to find a supportive network, opportunities, guidance and jobs, so you can excel in your tech career.
Hello everyone, thank you for tuning in Again. I am Kaye Batesman, the content director at Chican Code, and today we're discussing. The cybersecurity industry is cracking without enough women. An organisation in the UK has been attacked on average 854 times per week in the last six months, which makes it a prominent business risk, not just an IT issue. Currently, the industry is struggling to keep up with the number of attacks as a result of insufficient talent to help support businesses and drive innovation. Thankfully, I've got the one for Dr Dorit Doar, chief Technology Officer at Cybersecurity Company Checkpoint software, with me today, who is spreading the word about why it is essential to engage young women on careers in STEM, and offering her advice as someone who has climbed the ladder herself. Welcome, dorit. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much for inviting me. I'm excited to be here today, Good thank you.
Speaker 1:We'd love to kick off with a little bit of background about yourself, if that's okay please, yes, sure, so my career started in Israel.
Speaker 2:You start by going to the army after high school, but before that I studied the computer, math and computer science in the university. From that I went to some of the army units to work in my profession. This is an option you have when you do this, so I had eight years of experience of doing that. And then, exactly when I left that, I joined checkpoint. It was 95. Many years ago, it was 28 years ago, and since then I'm a checkpoint. On the way, I had two kids. All the family are cyber geeks Me, my husband and two kids that are grown up by now, and I've done a PhD in computer science as well Amazing, so you have quite a traditional background into into math and computer science and you took STEM subjects, and was there something about that?
Speaker 1:I mean, was there something about that at school or your family before you? I mean, you've encouraged a new generation of cyber geeks, as you said. Was it? Was it something about your family or your teachers that encouraged?
Speaker 2:that Actually. Actually I think that everybody let me decide for myself. There was nobody pushing me one way or another. My father was doing statistics but my mother was an architect, is an architect and an artist, so that you could say I'm very neutral feedback for doing what I did. But at early on I noticed that I like to solve readers and I liked math. Over time I learned a bit computers. It was very geeky back then because computers were with punch cards. So I had my first program written with punch cards and I felt it's about it's, it's rather exciting.
Speaker 2:But I actually didn't know what I want to do. I didn't have a fixed opinion and before going to the Army, people in Israel choose their direction and many people in my class went to study in the university. So I said you know, I'll open like a directory to see what, what could I learn in the university that could be interesting for me. So I flipped out the pages. It was a paper book on what you could study in the university and I reached a page where it said math and computer science. And all of a sudden I had this epiphany, like a moment, that somebody took everything I always wanted to learn together and put it in one page. At that moment it was clear to me that that's what I want to go and study.
Speaker 2:Later I got occupied with math and computer science and somehow directed into cyber with my army background and then continuing a checkpoint. I think it fits me a lot because I like the topics we could discuss why but. But it was kind of a very clear to me in person that that's what I needed to do and there was no like external need for push or examples or other reasons to do this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wanted to ask you a little bit about how you ended up in cybersecurity. You mentioned there your army background. Is that kind of what pushed you off in that direction and did you see there was this kind of a need there for more people and that that was going to be a good career choice?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so first I didn't, I didn't focus on the career choices based on what would be career choice. I must say I chose my careers based on what was interesting. At the moment Maybe it's not very long looking, but obviously I did find myself in a long looking job, so I don't know. The second is that I got into cyber through the army, but also many people that left the army move to other topics and I think that cyber has a combination of a challenging subject with deep technology where I could exercise my, my expertise, and there is an adversary and the adversary always push you hard. You always have to win versus the adversary and me, liking to solve riddles and being like a person that likes to win on the hard problems, was exciting for me to join specifically this space. But I must say I didn't think about it at the time as such, whether it's important to my career or not. Plus, in 95, the career for cyber was it in very, very early stages, so you didn't even call it cyber back then when I started the checkpoint.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, that's interesting. I mean also interested to know as well. You said you got two children and they're also cybergeeks, like girls or boys. There are boys, yeah, boys. I was going to say another generation of females, but they are boys. How are they found that studying as well? I mean, it's much easier when you have parents that are encouraging you. Is that kind?
Speaker 2:of. But we didn't. We didn't do this by encouragement. We I think we tried to be neutral, like my parents tried to be neutral with me. We gave them a lot of opportunities to study what they wanted they could. They could get interest in many topics and this was intriguing to them. They actually started in early age learning things over the internet. So it wasn't us pushing data to them, it wasn't at school, it was a self kind of drive and maybe they are similar like in in in type or in personality that drove them to the same topics. But it wasn't like we said that's the right choice for them, hence they should go do that. So it was their choice, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they must have seen something about the industry that really sparked their interest, which is what I wanted to ask you about a career in cyber. What makes a career in cyber so exciting?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think we should talk about the person, the company, the country, the universe. We should talk about it in many aspects, but let's start from the person themselves. I want to start by saying why it's good for women to study STEM. I think that there are a lot of roles related to STEM that are very prestigious, that are very intellectual and steaming, that are very flexible in hours of work, that are very rewarding in compensation. So it's kind of like dream work, I would say. There is a lot of jobs. They pay well.
Speaker 2:You could do many, many things. You could be an individual contributor, you could be a techie, you could be a product manager working more with clients. You could be a UI person, you could be a kernel person, you could be a mobile developer. You could develop an application in tandem with other people. You could develop it alone in front of the computer. So you have really all the opportunities in the world. And so that's, in general, computers and STEM.
Speaker 2:I think that cyber takes it to the extreme even more rewarding flexibility. It's doing good. It's a job that does good to the world. You end up helping clients protect themselves. I cannot tell you how many times customer told us and told me at checkpoint that I saved them, that I saved their career, that I saved their data, that I extremely helped them in the situation where they were stressful. So it's a job that does well to the world, for yourself, it rewards you and it takes to extreme, like many, many workplaces nice compensation, a lot of choice in spaces and what to do. So I think it's like STEM plus plus.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I love to actually mention the impact, the real world impact that it has and that, the feedback that you have had from people as well, that you saved them. You saved them from really tricky situations and just hearing that impact, I think sometimes young people don't quite realise what tech is and that tech solves real world problems. And with cyber that's slightly easier to see, isn't it? It's easier to see how you can help people and protect people's businesses and protect their data or whatever it may be, Whereas sometimes young people struggle a little bit with what a career in STEM might look like and who I might be helping and they sometimes just think this is going to be technical and I'm just going to work on my own and I'm not actually going to have much of a team and I'm not going to make much of an impact.
Speaker 1:And you mentioned some brilliant career choices there, Because I wanted to ask you about the different potential careers that people can have in cyber and it's not just always just thinking you're just stopping attackers or whatever it may be. You mentioned so many career choices there and jobs. I mean you mentioned product managers and UI and UX and developers, and they're not always things that people think of in cyber are they?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I want to say, when you do cybersecurity, you have a core that is very focused, maybe, on the attack vector and how to actually really defend it, and you have a lot of product elements around it that are critical to the delivery of this security. Because if the security is complex to implement or complex to use or complex to understand, it will not be usable. So these are not side parts that are not interesting, these are core parts. That makes a difference between an excellent product and a less excellent product. So there is a core team. If you really like the adversary attack scenario, you could sit down. You could learn about attacks. You could be creative on how to defend against them. You could bring out engines, but if this is not your choice, you could deal with everything else. You could deal with networking on the low level. You could deal with management. You could deal with Cloud. You could deal with mobile. You could deal with the user experience. These are product delivered to real customers. Sometimes the customer is even a consumer or an end user behind your product, so it has to be very self-explanatory and very interactive. You could talk to your clients and interact with them and find out what works for them. You could do kind of a whiteboard session or stand behind them like a shadowing and learn how good or simple is it what you define? Because the exact scenario of usage. You have to be the expert on the exact scenario of usage to tune it well for the scenarios that others will understand. So you could do all of that from the eyes of a developer, but you could do all of that from the eyes of a product manager that defined the product and doesn't code. Or you could do all of that from the eyes of a support personnel that helped the product or customer success, that make the product deployed, or even business selling it, marketing it.
Speaker 2:There are many, many professions around cyber. Some of them are closer to the core of the cyber, some of them are development or product and some are even in the outskirts and there is no one size fits all. You could do your work in front of the computer and achieve small tasks that you do by yourself. You could work in large teams. You could be a project manager of a large project or a large system. You could be a system architect that have all the elements under your watch and you're kind of the integrator of all of them. Or you could be very focused on a very expert point, part where your detailed expertise are needed to solve a very detailed and hard problem. So these are very, very different kind of day jobs. For the same definition of hey, I'm in the cyber.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly, I love the fact that you threw in the work creative as well there. I love it when people throw that in on the podcast. There's so many people when they think of tech, they don't think of the word creative and that is insane, that you think those in tech realize how creative you can be in your job. And, as you said, there are so many different aspects to cyber that you don't have to be that technical, and I wanted to ask you a little bit about soft skills and how useful they are for a career in cyber. Or, if you have to be highly technical and you kind of answered it there that all of the different things you need to do, that you are not working siloed on your own, as you said, that you have to be able to communicate clearly, you have to turn something quite complex into something quite simple and communicate across a range of teams. I don't think that's something that people instantly think of when working in cyber.
Speaker 2:And even take one aspect of it. Let's assume you are working in a team, but the team may be cross countries. Maybe part of your team is in Israel and part of your team is in the UK and part of your team is in the US. This is not an unlikely scenario. So just explaining to all these teams what you had in mind, what's your plan versus what they're playing, what you need from them or they have a problem right now that they can deliver what do you want? So how you compromise with them, how they enable you to progress without kind of stucking you, by understanding what are their needs and how you could kind of move forward with it.
Speaker 2:So there are many soft skills that just come from the type of organization you work in. And an example a few years back I realized that there were two teams that were really not working well together and after I analyzed it I saw that the two teams are really upset one on the other and it turned out that they didn't notice that there was a time difference of one hour because the daylight saving time changed in a different schedule between them. So they would send an invite for a certain time, thinking that's a certain time for the other side and the other side didn't show up and it was like a big deal in their opinion that they weren't respected, that the other side did not bother to show up and that created a whole misunderstanding about teamwork. But so things could be proactive and how to communicate the plan and how to make people work for the same mission. But things could be also reactive on how to understand miscommunications and how to deal with global organizations.
Speaker 2:Even if you don't work in a global team, your sales may be in another country. Your customer may be in another country. Their form, their culture, their dialogue is different than the way you conduct the business. There are many soft skills that are embedded. I think this is true in any job. This is certainly true in all the high tech industry and this is certainly true in the cyber industry as well. That's actually one of the things I find exciting about being in this area in this era of high tech industry globalization. I think that's what makes our jobs exciting.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, I agree, and something as simple as that has been able to communicate between teams about teams in different countries and daylight savings is just one of those soft skills that you pick up once you've been in work a little while as well just being more mindful of working with different teams in different countries, and it has nothing to do with whether or not you came out of university with a great computer science degree. That's just one of those soft skills that you pick up along the way. I couldn't agree more. I wanted to ask you a little bit about what more can companies do to attract women and girls into the industry, do you think?
Speaker 2:So I think there are like few stages of problems. There is the entry pipeline. The entry pipeline is simply not big enough. There are not enough women that choose cyber at the learning phase or the choice to enter to their career. They are not even looking at such things. Now, after they are accepted, there is a problem of drop. So some women would drop from this and we could discuss why would they drop. And then there is a problem of progress. You could stay in your job. You could stay in excellence of your developer and not progress. But in progressing to technological jobs or to leadership jobs, we also get a reduction in women. So I want to speak about the entry, about staying and about the promotions. So each of them is a separate part of the problem.
Speaker 2:On the first part, I think that the influence is mainly starting at a younger age. We should have like a brand that it's a good place to work in and that women are welcome and that it's a good career for women. But the selection to choose STEM and to choose cyber etc is a lot outside of the company's handlers and the pipe should simply be bigger. And that's a lot on the early education, at school by families, by different programs that would direct them to even try. I mean companies could volunteer to enhance it. For example, checkpoint, and I personally was on the board of an organization called SheCodes that is targeted at encouraging women, to quote. There are other organizations like Queen Bee and other organizations in Israel that are encouraging women to go to technology, to development, to high-tech, etc. We could help that, but there is a responsibility that is wider than the companies. Then we need to encourage them to enter. The language to be accepted to a company should be gender neutral. The process should be gender neutral. If possible, involvement in the process of other women showing the desire to have women on board. I think we've improved a lot in doing this and at the end let's say we got a woman into the workforce. We are already in disadvantage because not enough women applied and not enough women were accepted. But let's assume we have them inside Now. The goal is to keep them.
Speaker 2:I think sometimes women will drop off due to family constraints and I think we should help women see that there are alternatives and that there would not be better off doing something else, etc. We should understand that some of them have difficulty or some of them feel maybe alienated by team members that are men or something like this. We have a mentoring program internally, including juniors, to help them see and develop and answer questions in their career. But there could be other ways, just even creating a networking between the women in the workplace etc. Showing them that they are welcome and helping them not giving up when they think to give up, convincing them to stay, convincing them to take more chances, etc. This would all decrease the drop. So let's assume you have somebody and they are in and they have not dropped.
Speaker 2:Still you have to promote them as part of the regular promotion. There the women have the disadvantage that the men often think for themselves to be a CEO, even they are unqualified and women would usually de-qualified what they are qualified to do, so they would come underestimating themselves. So we need to balance the process. We need to welcome into the process equalization that helps the women show her skills. Even if she doesn't come and say, oh, I'm the best at everything, I could be anything you want, we could still extract her qualities and understand that she is better than the men. And we could help her find her route technology route, managing route, project management or product management or other routes and help her get promoted in the workforces. So I think we have many stages where the industry has a lot of influence the women too, by the way. But the industry has a lot of influence. But the initial pipeline has to come from a bigger education and marketing. For a young generation. That's kind of a good direction for them to choose.
Speaker 1:Yes, I agree and you're absolutely right to break that into three as well that there are problems throughout all stages to get women in, girls in, and then to retain them along the way and promoting them as well. It's interesting you talk about the pipeline and making the pipeline bigger. I've heard a few times about cultural differences and how it's so different in different countries. I had a lady on here recently from India and she said there wasn't an issue in, everybody just studied STEM, or girls studied STEM. In India, it just wasn't a big problem. And in the UK, when she got here, she said there is a problem in the UK and how strange that was to see, because she hadn't grown up with that. What was your experience like in Israel? Were you the only female? What was your experience?
Speaker 2:So, as I said, I'm a dinosaur. So I started my high school study before computers were there and during my high school I programmed in a punch card in computers. So this was a complete outlier to the industry at that time. So I would say that in high school there wasn't even a track of computers, it was more math and physics. But in my class at school there were 20 kids, 18 were men and two were women and we studied math and physics.
Speaker 2:So I think it's telling, even before computer, people like women didn't choose STEM. Actually, in the university, when I came to the university and again it wasn't that popular, just computer science back then we had a quite equal population of women and men studying math and computer science. There wasn't as much of a gap as there is today. Actually, the world deteriorated since then. I think one of the reasons is that today many kids have computers at home and the boys are spending more time in average in front of their computer at young age. So they are perceived maybe to have an advantage. So maybe women are choosing other tracks.
Speaker 2:I don't know for sure that this is a good theory, but when I went to the university there was actually much closer to equal than it is today. And still, when we finished high school, men finished the university. Not as many women went to work in computer science and they spread along many topics. So I think, all in all, I would say there was a problem and there is a problem, and today we are fighting to get above 20% of women in STEM. That's a situation in Israel as well. That's kind of the world average. There are countries in which this is better, but it's definitely in most countries. It's at the 20-something percent and it's definitely not enough. So it wasn't an issue for me in person, but it was an issue across the board. So I was lucky to have this aha moment and to decide that this is what I want to do, but apparently this was not the case with many other women around.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think some of that as well is down to what you see about the tech industry and especially what you see about the cyber industry. So I wanted to talk a little bit about stereotypes and the cyber industry and how can we break some of the stereotypes that we see in cyber and in tech on a whole. I think that stereotype, when you think of hackers, it's always a male hacker with the booty, but you always see that and they are always sitting in the basement with a Coke and a pizza.
Speaker 2:That's also not like that. But that's not the case in the real world. There are women hackers, there are women sissos, and they are not necessarily sitting with hoodies and certainly not necessarily eating pizza and drinking Coke. But I'm a good techie. I'm not that good marketeer so, frankly, I don't know how to change this market perception. It's such a stupid perception really. If this is the reason why we can't get women into cyber.
Speaker 1:This is a real stupid reason, yeah, and I think just more people like yourselves, just sharing your story and just letting more people know this is just not what the real world is like. As you said, more and more people sharing that and sharing what their day-to-day is like is so helpful to breaking that stereotype. But you are right, when you do see those images of hackers, they always tend to be male. But, as we say throughout this about supporting women in the cyber industry, what has been your own experience? Do you think the cyber industry is supportive of women and diversity? Is that something that you have experienced and more?
Speaker 2:people should know about. So first, I think the cyber industry is very supportive about diversity. This includes not just women and men, like other populations with problems of diversity, and I want to say that the cyber industry is missing so many people that if you just stand up and raise your voice, you'd be called by somebody. So I can't see how the cyber industry could afford not to be supportive of women. We are at 50% of the population.
Speaker 2:It's true that large percentage is eliminated by not even going to study the right profession, but I see so many open jobs, such a need for excellent people, that I don't think we should be worried about this. So for some reason, for example, many women go into life sciences or chemistry or other professions. I think there are much less jobs in chemistry or biology and there are much less lucrative, so maybe traditionally there were more women there, but an industry that is lacking so many talents must be striving to increase the women percentage. I also know for sure that it's a talk in the industry that there are HR organization, including our own HR, that is busy and measuring this and trying to make sure that we are taking a positive stand and that we are helping, making sure that if we have the right women, we would hire her and that we will promote her. So I'm quite sure that this is a very supportive situation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's something that more people should know. Perhaps they don't Again with that stereotype. They think that they're not going to be supported if they did go in to the industry, and something that a barrier that we need to keep breaking down. We are almost out of time and I wanted to ask you one last question. Do you have any final words of wisdom for anyone looking to get into the industry? Is there anything that you wish someone had told you?
Speaker 2:So, as I said, I feel lucky because I didn't have these questions in mind. I found it easy because I didn't have the like, I was not busy thinking about it all the time. So I don't have advice for myself. I do have advice for women. One is an advice to stop overthinking it. If I'll take one advice, I think if we look at the world today, maybe in the world of our parents and it's funny, I'm saying it because I've been a checkpoint 28 years but in the world of our parents people would keep their job for many years.
Speaker 2:In the current world, people move jobs every few years. So try it. You know you don't like it. Move elsewhere. What do you have to lose? You gain good profession. You gain good experience.
Speaker 2:You are now able to decide for yourself what you want to do. You have better understanding. I want to come back to you. I want to come back to you. I want to come back to you. I want to have better understanding. I want to program in this. I don't want to program. I want that. Then move on. It won't even seem strange. It won't even seem like you are jumpy or something, because that's the norm in the industry. So hey, I'm telling you, this is a very prestigious job. It has very nice compensation, it has very good opportunities, of course. But if you tried and didn't, like you know, be there two years and move on, try something else. So that's one advice.
Speaker 2:I think sometimes women overthink it and what would happen if and don't give it a chance, and I think some of the women that don't give it a chance would fall in love with it. Second part that I also think is that don't limit yourself. The sky is the limit. If you are good at that and if that's your passion, don't leave your passion because your girlfriends are not going that direction, that your girlfriends are talking on another topic. At Friday evening You'd find yourself on how to talk this topic and make it interesting for them as well. But don't be scared for the wrong reasons and really, if you choose something you love and you are good at, there is no better job on earth for you. So it doesn't matter, by the way, if it's cyber or something else. If you like art, go for art in the same way. But if you are really passionate about something and you really enjoy technology and you enjoy kind of this deep tech and stuff, go, do this. You could be excellent in this and this would be excellent choice for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is great advice. I think you are absolutely right. Especially as women, we tend to overthink everything and then the moment is gone. We have talked ourselves out of why we shouldn't try something, and you are right. I think there are lots of people that would just think I gave it a go. I really do love a career in tech or a career in cyber, and I'm so, so pleased that I gave it a chance. Or, like you said, it doesn't matter either and you can move. Take all those wonderful skills that you learn, all those soft skills that you learn, and take them elsewhere. What does it matter?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you could try five different topics. You could try in a short lifetime, before you decide to settle on something, what you want to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that is lovely advice to end it on, because we are already out of time. So thank you so much for joining me today. It's been a pleasure having you on to share your insight. So thank you so so much.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much for inviting me. It was pleasure to talk to you and I look forward to see all these women in the workplaces.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, so do we, and thank you so much to everybody listening as always. Thank you for joining us and we hope to see you again next time.
