According to the survey, the number of women in cyber security who see gender differences is low

IT has long been a predominantly male and sexist profession, and within IT, cybercity is even more male dominated. However, in a new survey, female respondents suggest some progress in changing men's attitudes.

In a survey released today of 200 women in the cyber security sector (every 100 in the U.K. and U.S.), 53 percent of respondents considered cyber security to have a gender bias problem. In contrast, in 2020, 66 percent of respondents agreed that there was a gender bias.

The survey, released today as part of International Women's Day, was conducted this year for cybersecurity vendor Tessian. Its author described the survey results as "progress".

Interestingly, nearly half of the women surveyed stated that the COVID-19 epidemic crisis affected their careers in a positive way.

This may be because according to the survey report, the cyber security sector is relatively unaffected. The overall job market has contracted globally, but 72 percent of survey respondents said their cybercity team hired at least one full-time person last year.

Perhaps, consequently, 89 percent of respondents said they felt safe in their jobs.

“Women have spoken in our report; Cyberspace is also an industry with a thriving career in a global epidemic, and the younger generation recognizes that this is important, "said Sabrina Castiglian, Tessian's chief financial officer and head of acting talent. More women and girls need to be shown how they can explore the opportunities available to them.

"Widespread awareness in schools is important, but businesses, too, take initiatives such as sharing their stories to hire more diverse candidates at the junior level for the future and develop them into senior roles and create platforms for role models. Medium can help create a more diverse talent pool for the future. We did not resolve the gender gap overnight. But acting now and playing long games will be of enormous benefit to both businesses and society. "

Women in the industry were surveyed by Tessian by Opinion Matters to survey 200 women cyber professionals. Survey respondents took on various roles, including CISO, network engineer, security architect, incident response, penetration tester, security analyst, software developer, data scientist, risk and compliance and security operations.

Equal pay will help

Another question women physicians were asked is what they think will help encourage more women into cyber security roles. The equal pay topped the list (47 percent), but was closely followed by a more diverse role model (44 percent), a gender-balanced workforce (43 percent), and a more apprenticeship program (41 percent).

Separately, 1,000 18–25-year-olds (both male and female, and in the U.S. and U.K.) were questioned about their interest in the field.

While many described cyber security as "interesting" and "important", only 31 percent said they would consider a job in the field. Women were almost twice as likely as men (42 percent compared to 26 percent) to say they would think of it as a career. But the report said that there is hope

“None of the grads have been given any preference recently. About half (45 percent) are not sure whether cybersecurity is for them. Asked how worried they were that they did not have the skills they needed. Others are not sure how to make a career change.

The report concludes, "This means there is work to be done," "To make the industry more attractive, we must first clarify what work actually works and how it can break down in the industry."