Making room for women in cybersecurity

To mark International Women’s Day, we’re offering you an opportunity to meet Aurélie Da Silva, Information Security Officer at POST Luxembourg. Having managed to carve out a niche for herself in what remains a predominantly male environment, she believes that greater gender diversity within cybersecurity and IT teams is a real asset.

Monday 8 March is International Women's Day. We still need to set aside a day for this issue, since there is plenty of work yet to be done, including at POST, to improve respect for women’s rights. Women continue to fall victim to unfair treatment, such as discrimination, inequality and prejudice, especially in the workplace. This is perhaps particularly the case in the IT sector, where the vast majority of employees are male.

Three women in the department

At POST, we’re gently trying to effect change. Three women hold positions of responsibility in the CyberForce department, which is responsible for securing information systems and data processing at each POST group entity.

One of them is Aurélie Da Silva, Information Security Officer at POST Luxembourg. “I joined in 2016, one year after the department was created,” she explains. “POST placed a lot of trust in me, because cybersecurity wasn’t my preferred field. Initially, my skillset was more geared towards organisation. But little by little, I became passionate about this sector and, with the support of the team, I studied and obtained the necessary certifications.”

Rapid integration

In the course of her career, Aurélie has faced inappropriate behaviour from some male colleagues, for example in relation to the way she dresses. At POST, she was able to count on the respect of each of her colleagues. “Obviously, it is a male-dominated environment, but I felt part of the team straight away. My colleagues took me under their wing to enable me to acquire the necessary skills quickly. There’s always a special kind of humour in a team of men, but it’s not something that bothers me. The main thing, for me, is that nobody judges my skills because I’m a woman.”

Although several women have joined POST's cybersecurity department, there is still a lot of work to be done to attract female professionals to the IT teams. “We would like to have more female colleagues, of course,” continues Aurélie. “The shortage is particularly acute for ‘ethical hacker’ positions and operational security functions. However, there are slightly more women in the field of risk analysis.”

Entrenched attitudes

But what is behind the limited number of women in the sector? And above all, how can the trend be reversed? Several initiatives have already been carried out, both at Luxembourg (the “Letzgoequal” initiative) and European level. In addition, a new Luxembourg association –Women Cyber Force – is being launched soon to try to attract more women into the cybersecurity sector.

Despite these steps, many people still have fixed ideas about what a male or female job should be. “On programming courses, for example, there are often still only a handful of women in a lecture hall full of men. They are sometimes teased, which does not encourage new candidates to come forward,” says Aurélie. “Women who want to work in IT or a male-dominated profession often have to justify themselves twice as much as men. Some even go so far as to masculinise their look to gain acceptance. That’s not how things should be.”

Aurélie thinks it is high time to ensure that women with a passion for IT can naturally move into these fields and professions. And this is all the more important when skills are lacking. “Gender balance is a real asset within a team. We don’t have the same way of looking at things and we can better approach each project by having access to diverse points of view. In the future, it is essential that men and women in this field are judged solely on the basis of their skills, not their gender,” concludes Aurélie.