The Role Of Women In Addressing New Challenges In HIT Security

By Megan Williams, contributing writer

While cyberattacks are a major factor in the most damaging healthcare data breaches, mistakes and other preventable internal errors are still responsible for the majority of individual breaches. Many experts have bemoaned the fact that such a simple issue is not being addressed, but one statistic around gender in information security may shed some light on a potential solution.

While more than 80 percent of healthcare workers are female, women make up less than 20 percent of information security jobs. This may seem like a simple difference in demographic, but when it comes to making substantive changes in overall employee behavior around technology, it’s a disparity IT solutions providers and their clients might want to take into consideration.

According to MeriTalk, a report that was released this year names diversity in the information security workforce as a potential answer to current challenges. The report, “Women In Security: Wisely Positioned For The Future Of InfoSec” by (ISC)² and Booz Allen Hamilton points to growing issues in the IS space, and calls for incentives to attract qualified women to security jobs. According to (ISC)² CEO David Shearer, “The information security field is expected to see a deficit of 1.5 million professionals by 2020 if we don’t take proactive measures to close the gap. Knowing this, it is rather frustrating to realize that we do not have more women working in the industry. Only 10 percent of information security professionals are women, and that needs to change. Through collaboration, research and partnerships, (ISC)² is committed to empowering underrepresented minority groups in the industry, such as women, who bring skill sets that are critical to this industry’s future growth.”

A Leg Up On Problem-Solving

The National Initiative for Cybersercurity Careers and Studies points to similar problem-solving benefits as a result of workforce diversity, “The lack of women in IT and cybersecurity represents a failure to capitalize on the benefits of diverse perspectives: in a world dependent on innovation, diversity can bring the best and brightest problem-solvers to the table; and at a time when technology drives economic growth, it can yield a larger and more competitive workforce.”

Key Findings

• Governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) is a fast-growing information security role and women tend to dominate in this area.
• The field holds strong potential with many educated women already in place — 58 percent of women have advanced degrees in comparison to 47 percent of men.
• Women hold more progressive views on training methods.

According to Angela Messer, the executive vice president leading Booz Allen’s predictive intelligence business in the firm’s Strategic Innovation Group, “The Internet of Things brings great opportunity and connectivity, but it also adds to the complexity of the cyber threat. The adaptive nature of cyber threats demands a talent management strategy that will broaden the skill sets and knowledge of the information security profession. We must demonstrate to young women thinking about entering the industry the many opportunities that await them and reinforce for those currently working in cybersecurity that they have bright futures ahead.”