The human factor constitutes at the operational level the first line of defense of organizations’ cyber strategy. Individuals remain key with regards to cyber education and awareness to address the cybersecurity challenge and embark on the digital transformation journey.
Diversity and inclusion in EGERIE’s DNA
“Women4Cyber aims to promote diversity and the inclusion of women in the field of cybersecurity, but also to raise awareness about this ecosystem. It’s an environment that is still riddled with stereotypes. However, mixed teams are often more creative, and generate more innovative solutions. At EGERIE we are proud of having 35% women in our team, most of them with technical profiles and in leadership positions, while the sector average is much lower” said Jean LARROUMETS, CEO & Founder.
Our corporate culture and values – respect, commitment and sharing – are instrumental in driving this human-centric approach and gender diversity focus. EGERIE has a dynamic team with varied profiles (R&D engineers, developers, cyber experts, customer success managers, C-Levels, etc.) from diverse backgrounds.
Outside of the company, EGERIE is also very active (and its founders included) within the education system to share their expertise with students and inspire young women to pursue a career in so-called STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).
Such collaborative mindset makes a lot of sense in the cyber risk analysis industry, where sharing information and experience is an absolute necessity. It’s what allows us to progress in an agile and collaborative way.
Time to widen the talents pool
The digital industry is facing a significant skills shortage, and the cybersecurity sector is no exception to this trend. Even though many women have been pioneers in the history of IT & security, this environment remains quite masculine.
At the French level only, one third of the talents pool required according to the national cybersecurity strategy (that should be worth of 75.000 employees by 2025 to address the multiple demands for this very promising sector), remains to be filled.
The skills gap requires to tap into all potential resources: How can we put aside half of the population? With regards to talents attraction, the missed opportunities from the lack of gender diversity are obvious. The digital sector would highly benefit from an increased diversity of skills, to better reflect the society, and to avoid as many biases as possible when building tools such as Artificial Intelligence.
Therefore, we are strongly supportive of all the work done by Women4Cyber and are delighted to contribute to its advocacy. EGERIE will continue to push for cybersecurity by, with and for everyone!
