Women in Software and Cybersecurity: Bobbie Stempfley (Podcast Series)

What are your plans, your hopes to address this gender gap, specifically at CERT? Bobbie: That is a really complex question because there are several pieces that play together. The first one is there are a million unfillable jobs in cybersecurity. That means there just are not enough people. We have to grow the number of people who understand how to resolve cybersecurity related issues, who are focused on it. We need to automate things, so we need more software folks who are smart in order to do that. We can bring women in, but the other interesting statistic is that more than half of them leave mid-career. So it's not just how do we bring them in, it is how do we keep them in that space? It takes a real holistic approach, right? We have to really focus on things like the Rooney Rule. I love the Rooney Rule. The Rooney rule says you have to have diversity candidates as a part of all of your selection pool, and you have to commit to diversity candidates as a part of your selection pool. I think thats an important part of the beginning. Now, that means they have to exist, right?