Many things are said about diversity and a lot of lip service is paid to truly diversifying organizations. I want to say a little about how I think about diversity in the context of security and security teams.
Divergent Thinking and Divergent Approaches
Diversity brings different perspectives. And in security, this is a Really Good Thing®. The worst possible thing you can do is to hire people for a security team who think exactly the way you do. You need a team that can stimulate discussion and highlight different points of view. That means you need to consider people with very different background from you. And that means people who don’t look or act like you. Who have diverse perspectives and don’t just think outside the box, but think outside completely different boxes from you.
So why is this a good thing? It provides a different frame of reference. That’s important whether you’re doing threat modeling, designing a new API or critiquing a security product.
Great Security Leaders Value Diversity
Anyone who wants to build a great security team needs to ensure different perspectives. A team that can think outside the box and think differently will always succeed over a team of clones. Actually, I think this approach applies to almost all fields: great teams need diverse perspectives.
I'm participating in the mentoring program at Cyversity and you should consider a similar program in your industry.