It’s great to see so much activity in the region aimed at getting more women into the cyber security sector and IT in general. It’s about time and it has taken a lot of dedication to get here.
Registrations have been open for the next round of the NCSC’s CyberFirst Girls competition and the region has had a staggering 32 schools enter so far. This is by far the best level of entries we have had and reflects the enormous amount of effort put in by our CyberFirst colleagues. Durham Johnston School won last year’s regional final and hopefully we can go one better and win the national final this year.
As part of last month’s #CyberFest we held a joint event with the Women in Tech group. It was really well attended and later this month we see the return of the EmPower event. Last year, over 300 year 8 schoolgirls attended the event at Newcastle United’s banqueting suite. This year is going to be huge, stretching to two days and with a target of 1100 students.
All these activities and others, such as the School’s Debate Competition, again as part of #CyberFest, are making a big difference. A part of me thinks it would be nice one day if they didn’t exist and the job was done. I suspect that is some way away.
What about other areas of diversity or underrepresented groups however? My suspicion is that the cyber security sector is underrepresented from ethnic groups and people from areas of deprivation. I don’t know though as I don’t think the work has been done to measure such things.
Over 90% of the North East population identifies as white British and this means that around 10% do not. I don’t believe the cyber security sector locally reflects this but this may be the circles I move in. The NCSC report Decrypting Diversity 2021 suggests that 83% of the UK sector identifies as white British with Asian or Asian British being the next largest group.
The North East has the highest percentage of households deprived in at least one dimension at 54.55%. (The four dimensions of deprivation being: Employment; Education; Health and disability; Housing.) Where would I begin to work out how many people in the sector are from deprived backgrounds? The NCSC report uses former eligibility for free school meals as an indicator and this could be a useful marker.
We should also think about age, disability and neurodivergence.
Good progress is being made with gender diversity but there us a lot more to do with the rest. We need to start by understanding the position we are in and this is something I am determined to do. In the meantime, our report card will say – could do better.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 