Today is Juneteenth. We celebrate emancipation and every person’s freedom over their own lives. While the official recognition of this day may be relatively recent, informal observations have been taking place since 1865. We still have so much work to do to bring genuine equality to all.
Within the cybersecurity profession, GITNUX posted in their 2023 statistics report that “only 9% of workers in the cybersecurity industry are people of color.”* This is not acceptable, painfully so. The problem has multiple causes. There are many sources for this problem, some may still be unknown. Believing that fixing a single issue will resolve the colossal imbalance in racial diversity that exists in cybersecurity would be wishful thinking.
We do know that there are still hiring practices that are not completely unbiased. Human resources departments have to put concerted efforts into overcoming long ingrained biases. Improvements are being made, but the problem still lingers.
Starting in early childhood education, we are still facing disproportionate access to high-tech learning resources. Some of the differences in distribution of learning resources are based on the tax base of the school’s location. This is a very well-known problem with education resource sharing. It is amplified with cybersecurity learning. School districts in close proximity to high-tech firms are, inadvertently, endowed with knowledge spillover from those firms. School districts in rural areas or urban centers without tech firms are disadvantaged because of this.
In my professional career, I have made an effort to provide opportunities to students and colleagues of color and socio-economically disadvantaged. I haven’t always been able to get them the resources they needed, but it wasn't because I didn’t try. If we all approach things with that attitude, I feel like we would get that sad 9% to the percentage that reflects our overall population.
For me, Juneteenth is a day to look at how far we have come toward genuine equality and how much more we still need to do.
*https://blog.gitnux.com/cybersecurity-diversity-statistics/#:~:text=Black%20(9%25)%2C%20Hispanic%20
Comments