Mind the Diversity Gap - A Panel Discussion

all right all right we will go ahead and get started thank you for coming to the besides Las Vegas common ground track this is the mind the diversity gap a panel discussion led by Don and he will introduce everybody else in a minute we would like to thank our sponsors especially our inner circle sponsors critical stack and Vala Mayo as well as some of our stellar sub bouncers which include the paranoids secure code warrior and Robin Hood if you have any cell phones please mute them because this is being recorded and streamed online and also if we have a chance for any questions please raise your hand and I'll run the mic over to you and with

that let's get started please welcome our panel discussion everybody you can clap if you want go for it that's awesome well thanks and welcome to mine the diversity gap I don't really think it's any major secret that the InfoSec industry has a diversity problem really there are a whole bunch of studies that we could bring up but honestly all you have to do is either go outside or go to your organization or go to your company wherever you may be and it'll kind of smack you in the face hey but why is this happening what why is it this way how have we been addressing this issue do we really need to address it with

talks like this and make changes to corporate policies and what have you how is it truly affecting us as a community and also how is it affecting us with the products and services that we also provide so today we're gonna let each of our panelists share their stories but the bulk of this session is going to be kind of like an interview style we're gonna have a bunch of questions for our panelists but then also we want you guys to participate as well so in addition to that we want that to be a casual safe and kind of productive conversation and we want it to be focused on the idea of sharing and problem solving because

working together we can actually help the security not only do better but actually be better so thanks for attending and we thank you advance for your future participation so I'm Don first full name is Don Don's L I'm the community manager for elearn security but most of you probably know me better for the ethical hacker Network a free online magazine that I founded and is now part of the elearn security family but before we get to our panelists Stephanie a Hazuki Oh Chloe miss dog a and Alyssa Miller we have a few ground rules for you so first one don't be a you-know-what okay second is no politics okay we want this to be truthful yet a positive session and

that's how we can truly make some lasting change but with that let me introduce our guests so we'll go one by one and let them introduce themselves stuff hi I'm Steph just kidding I'm Stephanie and my handle is Steph and sac on Twitter I am an information security analyst for a law firm I run but I'm an analyst but I run security for the region so yeah my name is Chloe sorry I am a security researcher advocate at background I'm also the co-founder of women in security also known as burçak and also the founder of women hackers which is an online private community for women hackers to connect with each other and learn new skills and I'm so happy to

be on this panel of both you these two are also for sec members and they actually are chapter lead in their own cities awesome so thank you guys for being here I'm Melissa Miller as you can see up there I work for a company called CDW a lot of you might recognize the name because you might have bought a computer from them at some point or something we do actually do security and we've been having security practice that's 20 years old I lead our information security solutions practice I've been in security for about 15 years now I've worked in consulting worlds I've worked in private industry and so yeah I'm just here hoping that we can

have a productive discussion and and maybe find a solution or two here excellent thank you guys so we have several questions that we want to ask the panelists and then we'll also eventually hear about their stories as we move through those questions and again keep in mind that we're gonna get you guys involved as well so please have your questions ready to go but before we even start something that we had actually discussed beforehand before we came here today is that you know what almost every single one of you are in a minority so how many of you guys are working in tech ok so so pretty much everybody and you guys have all experienced being that lonely tech

person in your organization so you have to go talk to the people who really don't care what you have to say try and get money that really isn't going to be given to you and you're gonna hear often how you're really just a cost center you're not really a revenue generator so we've all had to deal with that in a particular way so now take how you feel with that and now imagine if you are a minority of a minority or in some cases here a minority of a minority of a minority so I want you to keep that in mind so that way you guys can kind of understand at least some way how these

people feel but in addition to that here there are extended stories but before we get to that stuff can you maybe tell us a little bit of the difference between diversity and inclusion so diversity pretty much means having a variety of people or backgrounds just a variety of things rather in a space so inclusion though means bringing everybody into that space and making sure that everybody has a chance to participate in that space so those are the two separate definitions for diversity and inclusion they're not the same thing common misconception and do the other two want to add to that or or share anything along those lines you know I'll just say that you know we talk about

diversity we talk about inclusion and yes often those end up being almost used like synonymous words and you know companies try to hire for diversity they at some level understand diversity might be an important thing that they want to address but if you don't have an inclusive environment that is welcoming to everybody with those diverse backgrounds your retention you're hiring efforts they don't work and that's where I think you know we want to spend a lot of time today to kind of focus on that - the only thing to add on to both of these incredible responses it's just like diversity is it's not just gender it's not just how we look it's also the way we think so

those that have you know ADHD or dyslexia or any other it's just it's being able to be there and for everyone in the community in your work office to be inclusive with you as well so it's not just how you look it's also what's deep down side including sexuality and religion as well that's an excellent point because it can also be age the amount of your education it could be where you come from not just your educational background but where in the world you come from so those are great points but um elissa question for you why is diversity actually important can you give us maybe a tangible example as to where if we don't have diversity in our workplaces

or we're including them in our products how can we actually see tangible evidence to where they actually have some pretty epic fails so this is an important question right I mean first of all I've I've certainly heard the the question posed why is diversity so important and it's usually not posting quite that nice a manner but that's the question and you know thankfully we're starting to see some really tangible reasons for why diversity matters and it comes down to for those of you that have ever been in software development you understand the need of a strong test set if I'm developing a piece of software and I'm running that through my regression tests I know how important it

is that the data that I'm testing against is representative of all of the possibilities so when we think about now diversity in terms of the staff doing that development if that if we're developing a product that's going to be used by consumers and we don't think of all of the various ways in which they may use those products that can be problematic I can go back a few years when Apple was working with face ID and very quickly it came up that your iPhone couldn't detect the face of a person of color well how did we get there if we had people in the testing process a diverse set it shouldn't matter what color their faces

were for Apple to be able to say yes that's a human being another one that we saw in recent there was just a recent article on this is when you think about TSA we all love the body scanners at TSA right the issues with body scanners you think first of all one of the most recent ones is in terms of detecting hair and there were certain hairstyles that are predominantly worn by women of color that would constantly alert these large inordinate number of alerts for women that were wearing those hairstyles for transgender individuals there were issues with how their bodies were being detected for the longest time and so there those are cases where if we had

these diverse people in at the beginning when we were developing those products I'm not even talking about testing but what we're developing them they're familiar with those struggles because they've lived them everyday and so now as we're designing these products we can capture that as yeah this is something important we need to think about if we're going to be scanning somebody's body and making a decision or we're going to be looking at their face and trying to recognize that yes that is indeed not only a face but their face looking back at us and so the other example that I can think of right off the bat is that those systems are trained by AI and so with that AI is

really all dependent on what you put in it from a data set perspective and then once you have that data set then you have actual humans that say okay this is what X is and this is what Y is now go learn how to identify that better well if I don't know that there's a Z or I don't include that other type of data in my to set that's gonna be another epic fail where diversity could obviously solve that problem pretty quickly now with that now that we've kind of all warmed up a little bit you kind of know what we're talking about so let's get it let's get a little deeper now so with

that maybe Chloe what do you think is to blame for the lack of diversity in security and maybe you could share your personal story because I know and we can get to each one of you if you'd like to address this is that each one of you had a time in your lives where you probably felt like leaving security or IT in general I'm just doing something else and maybe you can discuss that a little bit and what was it that brought you back great okay so I think the best way to answer that question is to take everyone back that I almost can everyone hear me with this mic okay I almost left InfoSec about a year ago a little bit

over a year ago what happened was that I decided for International Women's Day I'm gonna write a blog of all these incredible stories of these women because I knew the statistic was 11% women are an InfoSec so I interviewed all these women they're sorry to interrupt can I borrow your microphone excellent okay they're having a hard time hearing you over on the other side ah okay all right Oh much better so basically when I was writing this blog person for women in InfoSec I basically I had this chance to talk to all these women and they told me about their stories their stories of why they are thinking about leaving what are the issues they've been facing and like it

went through one year but I didn't like really sink in until I went to RSA 2018 I was in this room and there's a couple hundred of people in there and I'll just be really honest most of them were white men actually I'm gonna say all of them were men except for two other women and I was like please say you're not an executor system please say you're not an executive assistant and they both were and we're walking out and like there's the bathroom so bathroom this is where when we talk about this often which is basically the men's you have this long line out the door at InfoSec Conference women's you open the door and sometimes there's not a single

person in there and you're like what this is this is different this isn't bad but it's weird so like I go into the restroom there's no one in there and I'm like okay this just feels really weird so that I decide to go to the hotel and when I'm going to the hotel I go in the bathroom I'm washing my hands and halsted then I was saying you know I'll just take off my makeup and I look in the mirror and it was like as if I got flooded with emotions because at that very moment was as if a blind fool just got lifted and everything that those women were telling me were happening to

me the entire time and I was blindsided by it next thing I know I'm on the ground crying having a real breakdown here and I mean it wasn't like a nice cry like it was like a ugly cry like curled up in a ball on the bathroom floor at a hotel and I didn't want to know how clean it was or not it just it was over and that's like that's it if men don't want me here why am I still here why do I have to keep doing this and if all these other women have been this industry for like I don't so then we're in there for like 20 years or more and they're not getting anywhere what's

the point of me being here if no one wants to accept me for who I am and then one of my friends was like there's this conference called day of security it's coming up you should go to it but at that time I already decided I'm gonna leave InfoSec so I started looking around gonna go to another tech job probably because I live in SF and it's really expensive and so then I go today or security I walk in the room there's 200 women in there and suddenly I felt like oh wait there's this great community of women this is fantastic and then from there I decide I want to go to b-sides I want to go to Def Con

and it was my first time I was last year I was a volt I was actually a room host in this room and yeah all those people that I interviewed they actually paid for flights hotels they everything because they didn't want to see me leave and that was when everything changed because I realized men and women do not want to see more women leaving and that was the game-changing point so I in the issues when it comes to how do we keep women in there if you are in a conference room and there's one woman in there you better make sure that that woman is heard that means if she is giving an idea make sure everyone hears

that idea cuz chances aren't they will dismiss it or another man will take it over and everyone will applaud him say he's doing a good job but in reality was the woman who gave the idea in the first place so that's the first thing also don't turn onto a woman and ask for her to go get you some water she's gonna glass water it's never a good thing to do I think those were kind of the main ones is in your office make sure you know that and know your boundaries don't don't do weird things you know when you're doing something wrong don't do weird slack messaging to other women employees okay that's all I'm gonna say

on that fret I know these guys have plenty more maybe we'll jump into that a little deeper as we as you put it on Twitter get a little real but stuff you also had a story to where you came really close to leaving and could you share that along with also the benefit and the advantages to finding a good mentor yes okay so two years ago fall of 2017 I was tired of the industry my current job was being a dick I could say that I wanted to get promoted into the security position at my company and I did everything right like everything that they asked which they changed the bar many times and I reached the bar every

single time and so finally this time they promoted me to something else and then told me I couldn't get into security for another year I was like wow and so I was like I'm gonna be a cop psychologist ever discovered I'm just gonna go into psychology be a therapist I'm done with tech like this is annoying like I literally at that point had spent three years then enough four years trying to get into security various different ways and it was like I was getting cock-blocked all over the place and so I was like you know what this is who has to struggle this much to get into a job like I'm working for you I'm like

why do I have to fight to work for you so I was over it but then I think something in me was like let me see if I can find a mentor and before that point like she said a lot of the women insecurity I had come across had been like an assistant or like customer success manager and those roles are important but they don't really give me anything to aspire to at all because I don't really want to do those things so for me I ended up hearing about Kirsten brazier who's Kirsten racer on Twitter and she had done a panel in Houston security conference he said Kahn and I decided I was gonna reach out to her and

she ended up saying you know here's my number call me on Sunday I do this thing where I talk women off the ledge so you'll just be my Sunday appointment and so we spent like two hours talking and I was telling her my story and she was like telling me like her story which was like literally a mirror of mine and so we're having this like really like girl empowerment but also kind of a depressing moment because we're both extreme the same story and so she kind of said okay well these are the things that I need you to do I need you to get a website and I need you to document what you're doing in the industry to

learn I need you to get on Twitter and I was like Twitter so Oh getting on it she's like trust me like there's a community on there and so I did those two things and she's like you know you want to get your sec plus go ahead and get that you know it's not like the most I guess respected among like you know the super technical guys but it'll get your foot in the door so she kind of told me about all these things and Twitter actually help me find my community and that helped me realize that there are women in the industry because up until that point I was like did all the women leave and like I'm the

only one left and like I'm just waiting til I get to the point where it's like oh this is why they left you know so that's why having a mentor actually helped me she didn't it's not like she walked me up to the front of the line was like hire her which is not even my style anyway as a Nigerian I'm too proud for that so I but she did like show me like different steps of like being encouraged on a day to day basis which having a community actually does that for you in going to her when there are really tough things that I'm facing in this industry helps a lot because at that

point I can say okay this is the thing that happened is it normal or this is what they're paying me is that a good you know salary things like that are very valuable especially considering some of us are underpaid but I did we'd meet a woman this week that said she's never been underpaid but that's like minority I was like oh I'll get your tips yeah how did know that you're being underpaid how know you're being mistreated those kinds of things it was like having a big sister in the industry and it was invaluable for me so that was that she is literally the reason I'm still here so well that's awesome because not only that but one of the

things that you mentioned to me is that anytime you go somewhere you didn't see anyone that looked like you so you didn't think that it was a place for you right and so it's it's incredibly important that not only did you find the mentor but that you actually took the advice and did it because now when other people like you come and see they're like hey there's a strong intelligent black woman I can do that too and so with that ELISA you had a similar thing as well of trying to be an example and showing people that you know what this is a place for a lot of other people that can join that may not think that

they're really accepted or part of this community can you share your story yes so no surprise and this for those of you that followed me on Twitter know what this isn't something I normally just bring up my transition really is probably the key thing that had me really debating getting out of InfoSec I was working in InfoSec for a while and when I announced you know to obviously a lot of people that this is who I am and this this is what I'm planning to do you know the reactions were very interesting to your face people are very politically correct I'll say but I had for instance a colleague of mine who used to be a boss of mine who

said to me early on well just don't don't go getting too hot because I don't want to you know he was worried that he was gonna be attracted to me and that that stops you in your tracks when you hear something like that like dude you really just said that you know and of course you get the predictable stuff the you know sales guy the director of sales who couldn't stop misgendering me and it you know it as a trans woman you kind of understand that to a point like ok you've known me as this person and I'm asking you to change your perceptions of me I understand that but there comes that point where it's like okay this

isn't accidental anymore and I had been previously fairly active in the industry from speaking not not really boisterous about it but whatever and I started to take in all of these these different pieces of feedback and it's hard not to focus on that and what's it gonna be like when I go to b-sides Las Vegas and I sit down here and all these people who some of them probably knew me before my transition and they may not even recognize me but they are gonna recognize Who I am in terms of my gender identity and so forth and it's a very daunting thing I mean I tell you I'm shaking right now because this is probably the first time I've talked

about this in a public space in the InfoSec world people know it I don't hide it I'm not at all ashamed of it but to actually you know there's no typically no need for me to talk about it it doesn't define who I am you know I'm saying I'm a trans woman there's no different than saying I'm an Irish woman or saying I'm a white woman it's an adjective but to sit here and actually make it to bring it up as part of the issue that's tough and it's not just trans women who struggle with that it is men who are gay it is women who are bisexual or lesbians it is you you name it a lot

of us you know it's not something we wear on our face every day but it's those pieces that people know about and so when we think about this in terms of trying to be in an inclusive environment if we're not empathetic to the experiences of people who aren't like us and we don't take into account how the things that we say the things that we do that are great when we're in a very homogeneous group like we saw often find ourselves that those may have a very significant and profound impact on other people that's where the problems start to come in with being truly inclusive in this industry well and that's really tough for you to talk

about and I know so now I'm going to give you a chance to brag a little bit because you actually overcame all of that and now you're actually in management positions and you're breaking through that ceiling so can you tell us a little bit about what did it take to do that how how how difficult was it if at all and then now that you're here has it changed is it better or worse but here at least brag a little bit about what you got what you accomplished well I'll take it from the reverse is it better hell yeah I am finally my own self I mean you know to be able to sit up here

and be with you people in and be real I mean this is this is Who I am you know this is after spending far too many years trying to live in a world where I didn't really fit and trying to match up and and to act in the ways that everybody told me I needed to act because of how I looked and and how I was born and you know so yeah I've absolutely come out of my shell a little bit you know to that end a yeah it's had its struggles you know I also have the added benefit of okay I did live all those years in that other space where I had certain privilege and to be my real

self I had to give up some of that privilege but I also was able to hold on to the fact that yeah I had been able to build a career in part because of the privilege that I enjoyed so where I sit now being in a leadership position in an organization both you know with CDW with Wasik and with other organizations I'm beginning to work with as well it's this is my time to use that privilege that I've got to help those who you know most women don't get to experience that same kind of privilege and so that's become a focus for me and that's the thing that's really helped me to even sit here today

and talk about this is hey this is who I am and what's gotten me here can help others get even farther than where I am today and any piece that I can do to be a part of that is something that not only do I find rewarding but it it it's there's a sense of duty in that and so i'm yeah i am proud to actually be sitting here today at besides speaking to a bunch of like-minded security professionals so hope you don't mind [Applause] but with that now let's bring it back to some serious stuff because what Alissa mentioned was is that men were not bashful at all about coming on to her when she was making her transition and

that's all too common and Chloe you actually mentioned a few things that happen at conferences that honestly when we were talking about it was pretty damn disturbing so could you share that with us because I know it's a little difficult but now it's time for you to shake a little bit okay so you guys want to hear the truth so I've been to 18 conferences oh wait no now 20 conferences in the past five months I've had three guys treading into my hotel rooms at conferences so I no longer can stay at conference hotels thank you to keep my safety and now when I go and book a hotel I can't use my name I'll

have to use someone else's name for now on and out not just that I've also been assaulted twice at a conferences so the first time I was actually assaulted by someone grabbed me by my neck against a wall he was drinking and then the last one was when I was in new bird coming back from RSA home this guy decides to see he sees me wearing a lei because I went to Tiki con I don't know if anyone else take econ but it's like strain RSA and I had like the lay on and whatnots in the car I only have one drink okay not drunk nuts I'm fine totally fine the guy sees me wearing

this or he thinks it's totally okay so what he does is Anwar on the bridge in the uber he grabs me by my upper thigh puts his hand right on me and this was a shared uber and I'd like quickly just took his hand off and like moved it and there's been many other times where it's gotten close to that - so if you see something say something at Def Con it's coming up there is a number I'll probably tweet it out I think all of us we're going to end up tweeting it out at some point this week know that number know your safety you see something go down say something it's very very important and also if

you're drinking please don't over drink because that could be dangerous to for everyone no I mean I know Chloe is becoming you know kind of the celebrity now and so you know normally celebrities have to change their names but I mean she's speaking at six different events this week is that correct so you know but that's a shame I mean imagine that I mean that this is what women have to go through normally but now just because they're involved in InfoSec they actually have to change their names not because they're celebrity but just because they're a woman oh and the death threats you get death threats it's awesome you get death threats on Twitter if you

speak out a lot also you will get a lot of these tweets which is like hi there and it's like weird but the other ones that I like I cannot stand is long they're like you should be more concerned about getting married and having kids you know kitchen is the right place for you you look like you could be a good chef am i okay you know so maybe here's here's my opportunity to offer a slight suggestion if we're tech people and we're InfoSec people well maybe we should put it in a way that everybody could understand so why don't we treat women like pentest engagements and if you don't have permission it's not only not right it's probably

partially illegal too can we write up the rules of engagement on that please just hand it out at these conferences right seriously but Chloe does bring up a good point please help spread the message and tweet if you haven't seen up here already this is where you can contact all of these ladies as well as follow them on Twitter and please retweet those important messages but another thing that you guys had mentioned often is the feeling of community finding something that you can find to engage yourself in where you don't necessarily feel alone and stuff I know you brought this up and it was just interesting because there were multiple different definitions of community and

not only being part of a large community but finding smaller communities so again you're not alone could you share some of that because I know you mentioned things like your Twitter community and you also have an event where you have people come out and actually learn technology in communities that you create could you share that with us yeah so community is obviously important to me based off of what I said earlier so I tried to do that myself last year when I was still a security hopeful I did a lot of tech a Thon's because I didn't like studying alone like I can do a lot of stuff alone but for whatever reason studying was

really hard alone at that time so I did some techadons and like we lab side-by-side virtually some of my friends would come over and we would lab so that's like something that I did off just my own strength no organization tied to me but then also doing things like you know whoa sack I'm a lead for the wisp scholars and whispers women and security and privacy and they give out scholarships to attend DEFCON every year and I an initiative so I decided to you know be alieve this year every time that there's an opportunity to do something that will help other people feel included I try to put myself in there because I know what it's like to feel as

if there's nobody that gives a and you're just like going to work and working with your co-workers who are dicks and you know so I feel like community is a huge part for me to give back and I think that that's the way that a lot of people who are in their shell too can kind of get out of their shell like last year in January I had 92 followers when I decided to take up my mentors offer to join Twitter and over the year like I've really met some bomb people that I meet IRL at these conferences and without them there's a lot of things that I wouldn't be doing like this panel right here so I think

that community is important not just because you get to be on panels but also because you don't feel alone and for me I will also say a big part of you know feeling like this is something that you can do meanings the security thing is seeing people like you who have also achieved or done the security thing and so when there's a lack of people who have done the security thing you're thinking you're pioneering something and that's not necessarily a task that anybody wants to take on you have to deal with everything first which means you're just gonna have to literally meet obstacle after obstacle after obstacle and after some time you get burnt out from that you're just kind

of like what am I doing this for I don't really give a about excuse me about this stuff you know I just want to work and learn and nerd out and have the environment of supporting people who just want to teach and you would think that there are more spaces like that because us nerds we like to talk about the stuff that Werner we'd like to nerd out about however there's like this huge I had in mind in the beginning of my career I had a lot of you basically can't girls stay out kind of messaging it wasn't so blunt is that but that's pretty much what it was and I had a friend confirmed that that's what it

was at the time so I think that community though like you have the women hackers group that helps you know people who want to do the hacker thing and they're just kind of like but I'm so terrified of doing it I don't have a safe space to do it I can't say I don't know without feeling like someone's going to judge me or like say oh you knew or whatever about it so I think that long story short community is important for both the reasons that I stated so well and to find out the positive and maybe we'll do this a little in reverse order now but I mean what you're doing is definitely helping

for the equal treatment of minorities which I know is incredibly important to you but now it's your turn to shake a little bit you ready so we had talked about in a previous conversation about how when you were reaching out to those communities and you went to women's groups that there is a little difference there too so kind of like being the minority of a minority of a minority you experienced that not only were these women groups or women panels all comprised of all white women but more often than not all straight white women so can you tell us a little bit about your feelings on that and maybe how you feel you know breaking through and being

the example that other people can follow yeah there's a real issue in the industry you know they cover like behalf asset just kind of like yeah I mean everybody's about this diversity thing like what are we gonna do we're gonna do white women that's the answer and they just like put a whole bunch of white people on the stage it's like a white guy moderator and a white women panel and it's like they're all straight they don't really I think I said in a recent part I have a podcast I didn't say that earlier but I said in a recent episode that it's like having a book with 50 chapters and having the same chapter for every single

chapter all 50 chapters are just exactly the same and reading it over and over and over again you need a total picture which means including other people of other sexualities like you said other like neurodiverse people as well I think having more people makes the story complete you don't have everybody's stories I can't sit up here and tell you anything about someone who has this less yeah cuz I don't have dyslexia but I do have ADHD so I can tell you about being black and tell you about being Nigerian I can tell you about being a woman but I can't tell you about being a white woman or an NEA women or a woman or an Asian

woman or anything like that I can only tell you about my own story so as much as it's important for me to be here to speak for black women it's also important for somebody to speak for Indian women or you know other I'm only nigerian american so there's no like africa's a huge continent like this other african spaces or other european spaces or austria like everywhere like you need to have somebody from each group to represent because most of us if we look at where we are in our friend groups in our family and everything we're very homogenous you know you might hang out with unintentionally or intentionally you might hang out with one color person or one gender like i

tend to gravitate towards black women and it's something i do have white women friends and other rais'd women friends and other raised male friends but for the most part if I look at my close friends for the past like my whole life if there will be black women and that might be something tied to my childhood I don't know we'll explore that in therapy but I will say you know I need to hear other people's stories so that I have a more total and complete picture of things like for instance I mean there's a show called pose I don't know if anybody's familiar with it but it talks about that yeah it talks about the transgender experience and it's

something that I never had known the extent of had they not made a piece of art like that I would be totally and completely ignorant as I was before so now I have clarity if they had made a show about a white woman who falls in love with someone and then breaks up and then falls in line like that's the same thing and I don't relate to it so I think it's important to have a mixture which is the diverse part of diversity and inclusion without that we just get the same story that we can't relate to we feel alone we feel isolated and we feel different even though there are probably millions of people that are just like us out there

we have no context for that because you know all the panel's are just one thing so yeah no no that's actually good and we had mentioned that earlier where diversity is not just about gender or identity there's all kinds of different ways that you could look at diversity and in fact we had podcasts with people from Microsoft that said exactly the same thing and they were finding the same exact flaws that we mentioned earlier on AI but we can go on and on so one thing to just quickly point out here a really good takeaway is that the three women up on this panel right now are incredibly courageous they are comfortable speaking out but a lot of

you may not and so we will encourage you in just a couple minutes in order to to hopefully you can share your experiences your feelings or whatever you you can but a lot of you are not so I highly encourage you that if you have a story and you really don't quite have the courage to get it out there contact them I'm telling you they're gonna help you but with that we kind of have gone over the past and what's going on in the present let's take just a couple minutes to focus on what you guys think we need to do in the future before we open it up to additional questions so Alyssa you have

been very successful in large corporate America so maybe you can kind of offer some suggestions not only maybe what your company is doing and they could be the example for what others are doing but maybe some suggestions on where we could be doing better in corporate America sure so um yeah I could talk for a week on this obviously as I think all three of us could you know in the corporate world again I'll go back - it all starts with that inclusivity and organizations you know stuff brings up a really good point there's so many ways that you can look at diversity and we want to be diverse oh we're gonna hire to be diverse well what does that mean

I mean you're gonna target one group to the you know detriment of the others and really it's not the answer the answer is we need to work out on culture and our culture needs to be one where it's not socially acceptable to be as you put it so bluntly before to be a dick if you're gonna be a dick that should not be culturally acceptable in your organization and you know I've been in organizations where it's tremendous that I I won't lie that the company I work for right now as a whole is wonderful you know from an inclusion perspective I walked in the front door the very first time and our offices in Lincolnshire and

I you feel it when you walk through the door so really I can't even describe it but when you walk in and you can just it's not that feeling of walking in and seeing a bunch of you know white males walking around or seeing a bunch of white people walking around or anything I mean you know you you see just that okay this looks like everyday life out on the street or anywhere else but then there comes this one little thing and that is it takes one bad apple to ruin it and I've seen them in the best organizations in the world that one bad apple that can ruin everything and that's where organizations really need

to be stronger in how they react you know organizations more and more now and some of its because the EEOC forces their hand they have things like ethics hotlines where you can report if you've been discriminated against and so forth but how many times do employees call that ethics hotline say hey I've been discriminated against by my boss and what's the first response they bring that employee together with the boss and say let's work this out it doesn't work that is the absolute worst thing you can do in that situation because you've now told this employee it is not safe for you to report because the person that is causing this problem is now going to

come to you in this situation and confront you on the behaviors yes we live in a society where the accused to have the right to confront their accusers I get that but until the facts are out until that investigation has concluded we we can't do this and we need to be able to react and it can't be a reaction either of what we're going to move you to a different team since you're having a problem with that boss no I don't have the problem with the boss the boss has a problem right me and we can do better in corporate America of doing that if we look at the Human Rights Commission and their Corporate

Equality Index it's a nice start but there are so many things that don't get taken into account even with that where organizations may have EEOC complaints filed against them that's not something that the HRC looks at so getting better with that is it's gonna be multifaceted and it's got to be led by the private sector we cannot look to government to do this for us it has to be organizations that recognize the value of diversity recognize that inclusivity is the way to get there with a welcoming culture and be motivated to do it excellent so I know we don't have that much time left so just very quickly Chloe with all your experiences at conferences what kind of positive

suggestions can you make for them okay so one of my suggestions is a lot of conferences they have a slack make sure you also let people know that there's like one you can report in that's going to be really helpful another way is to have one person to delegate when it comes to anything when someone wants to report something I think that's like the number one deaf constant great job for like this is a number here's an image do not forget about this reshare I love that that's one way the other thing is making sure that people are aware when signing up for a conference that they follow the certain rules that's going to be very

important as well I think other than that like really you see each other around you see when someone's drinking you see if they're doing something inappropriate walk over I asked the person like hey are you okay is everything all right they're like yeah everything's fine no that's good if not help them map the other approaches if you ever see someone who's kind of like oh god help me kind of look and we've all seen that once in a while go rescue that person be like hey you know what let's go get a water really fast or hey your friend wanted me to grab you for a second and like just take the person out of that space for a

little bit that's the best recommendations have for others but ladies honestly if you're ever in a situation like that pretend your phone's vibrating pick it up walk out that's the best way of doing it the other thing is if a guy asked for your phone number give an old phone number they memorized like you know your childhood number that no one uses so then the guy does not expect that you give him a fake number because you can tell instants gonna fake number I'm a social engineer you can definitely tell so give an old number and be like this is my number and then be like oh there's my friend she's over there so that's one way I had to do it

just know be safe always have a buddy I think that's number one when you're at any conference by the way if you are a woman hacker let me know I'll get young woman hackers we also have a channel in there for conferences so if you're ever at our conference you can always ping to see what other women wish we have were 300 women now are at that conference - I see the person in the back hi so yeah so just know that you will always have a buddy now so it's a great way to stay safe excellent thank you and Steph what would you do in the future to make sure that communities whether large or small

are more inclusive what would you make for suggestions that is hard because I think that that depends on who runs the community and what they want out of it so I would just say that as people who are being a part of this community if you feel like it's like really bland and one flavor but you don't participate in it or that you call it out and say hey you know this space would be better if we had more of this representation or this space would be better we had more than that I want to say that sometimes it is not purposefully exclusive sometimes the person might just gravitate towards a certain type of demographic whether it be like primarily

young people or whatever so I think that sometimes though if you call your there attention to something their reaction will tell you if it's if it's on purpose or not but for me I think that they're kind of have that experience on Twitter this week yeah exactly so I think that you should just make sure that you're in part of those kinds of spaces make sure that people have a voice I know Chloe was a guest actually on my podcast and she talked about how if a person of color hasn't been accepted to a con that she would just basically do their talk I don't like take their talk and like put it up and be like oh this is the person

to talk and that's like one way but you know making sure that people of color or people that are minorities are people who are of different sexual orientations or whatever have a voice or a space anywhere that you are is very very crucial part of changing the landscape of the industry so that's pretty much and again it's hard I mean standing up like these women have done is not easy so if you need help making that first step please contact them but speaking of which maybe this could be a first step for some of you anybody want to share their story anything that they want to talk about excellent we questions too so you don't necessarily have to share your

story or anything personal if you have any question for the ladies we have a microphone that's going around so please go for it and speak clearly into the microphone sit on yep so I have a question and corporate America I work for Intel so I'm very well-versed with this and Stephanie you kind of alluded to it has no bounds for coming up with new ways to silo ourselves and so many companies now for diversity and inclusion out there employee resource groups or their networking resource groups but we had Intel have found over the last because we've had I mean the LGBT employee resource group at Intel is the oldest employee resource group but we found out

it was all just us once again we weren't very diverse because we were people who were outside these groups didn't feel they could join these groups so I'm wondering as you see this come up in corporate America what do you think corporate America can do to fix that [Music] that gets kind of tricky and the reason why I say that is sometimes because the landscape is what it is at this point in time sometimes those groups are created to be safe like a safe space so as of like a defensive kind of mechanism it's like if you come into this space I don't want you to like you know like let's say putting your straightness all over it or

whatever I feel like sometimes they're like supposed to be like these really safe spaces and you want to be exclusive because you're trying to preserve the integrity of the group so I think there's going to have to be some sort of vetting that happens until things like are completely different and everybody just is very accepting of everything but on the other hand I do think that people should make an effort to at least like leave the door cracked so if there's somebody that's like hey you should kind of like say okay you know you can come in if you feel like that person's being genuine but you're right like you know because I know that there are certain

organizations that have black board organizations within the organization and they can be a little bit more like you know come into our club but I think that's defensive so I'm not I think like I'm gonna have like a question mark that's why wants to go first so they so I'll build off that because we actually saw this with this came up with low SEC we had some some men who are concerned about the fact that our chapter meetings are all women and it does go back to what Steph said first of all there are times where these groups they're about building that safe space and they're about making sure that we have an environment where we can identify with

other people who are doing the same work that we are that maybe we don't get to see every day so that can be important but I think to break through what you're talking about one of the key things for these resource groups to do is to sponsor events that aren't specific to anything related to their purpose in existing so for instance our women's resource group you know go out and sponsor a you know a lockpick village or you know sit down and this is something I'm actually proposing in my company right now then so if they're watching they're hearing about this for the first time but seriously having you know women in that group hold an event in say the

cafeteria where you just teach people about practical security for everyday you know from whether it's personal assistant devices or online security whatever these types of things or you know pick those different things where it's not a women's event it's a hey we're gonna teach you this but yeah it's all the people that are represented by this group because now you can pull in that involvement you say hey we're all about being with the rest of y'all yes we have our safe meetings where it's really our group but we want you to be a part of what we're doing - that's actually a fantastic suggestion Chloe anything you want to add to that we have just a few minutes left but I did want

to remind everybody that we had a little contest going on on Twitter and so we got we got some some submissions but we also wanted to extend it a little bit more so that way we could get more so if you want to share your story in a positive way please go check out their Twitter feeds and go look for the hashtag InfoSec diversity gap and share something positive that you did to either overcome a stereotype or something where you became the face of your particular group to be more inclusive and encouraged diversity and with that the top pick that that we will eventually but between us choose will actually get some free pen testing courses and certifications

from elearn security but with that we have a lot more questions yeah yeah I want to toss one thing in there real quick if you are not comfortable sharing your story oh wow and the DM please DM us that was actually a topic that came up somebody pointed that out to us we don't want this to be you know difficult for anybody if you want to participate and you don't want to share we're not gonna share it with anybody just you know send us the DM instead exactly because as we mentioned numerous times you may not be at the place where these ladies are where they're very open and willing to share their stories you may

not be there and so if you want to DM us with your story that's great another question yeah yes sir name is Richard so father of two beautiful girls six and four and you know I some of my best best employees are women so I'm glad that you guys are doing what you're doing don't give up keep on doing it what would you have advice for a father of two girls and also what are you doing to help the future right the future of girls in the industry okay so there's a couple things one I always track men with fathers I have two daughters and you want to kind of teach them how to hack because I'll be honest even if they

don't want to be hackers it's something really empowering when you could break and like I don't know sorry about that like I took all my anger and rage and like how can I break this um so I think one of the things you could definitely do is there's mentorship so if you want to like I could connect you with a mentor who can like be there for you kind of like a like a daddy-daughter thing I guess really good also to keep enforcing to your daughters that regardless of their backgrounds there's gonna be men that are not gonna want them to have higher positions they're gonna ignore them just know that like the most powerful women are the

women that are empowered and my dad kept ingrained that in my mind like whenever I had a low moment he's like whenever you are an empowered woman you're the most dangerous thing to a man's eyes most of the time so I honestly just keep enforcing it with your daughters and if there's anything I can help to see at me and you and I can have a sit-down talk really 30 minutes on a phone I'm totally down for doing that and most of our other panelists are that way too so if you have any additional questions that we didn't have time to get to it today tweet them contact them he'll meet us out there you can ask us questions we're

more than willing to help and share and hopefully empower the rest of you is that our time that's our time that is our time thank you so much you guys were great