TryHackMe races to add women to Christmas cyber challenge roster after backlash

Cybersecurity training provider TryHackMe is scrambling to recruit women infosec pros to help with its Christmas challenge following backlash concerning a lack of gender diversity. In announcing its annual Advent of Cyber event, which offers 24 days of free beginner-level cyber training tasks throughout December, TryHackMe …

[A Non e-mouse]

This is one of those chicken & egg problems: How do you encourage women (or any other group) to join if there are few/no role models in the first place.

[Anonymous Coward]

"here are some industry professionals and one we publicly said to the tech press is only there to pad out the roster"

The question is which woman would even trash her dignity by applying for so cliche a reason, renowned professional or not it's not gonna look good this late in the day

[An_Old_Dog]

Role Models

I didn't become a techie because I had a 'role model' I emulated. I did so because computers were/are interesting to me.

[Valeyard]

Re: Role Models

and let's face it. computer users on 80s/90s TV and film were not exactly portrayed as role models for anyone to emulate and yet here we are...

[Oli.]

Re: Role Models

Yeah, but you're an old dog, kids these days need an influencer to imitate.

Just kidding. Somewhat.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah.....I see......."Men" are the problem.......

.....just ask SolarWinds or Jaguar Land Rover........

[codejunky]

Hmm

It sounds like whoever complained should be reported for sexism. Are we not supposed to be gender blind and so as the available line-up was males because females were not available it seems someone went looking for the females which would be discrimination. Just as if they went looking for any other characteristic.

[jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid]

Re: Hmm

"as the available line-up was males because females were not available it seems someone went looking for the females which would be discrimination"

Ask yourself why are there no females available? If you don't make the effort to be more inclusive and actively promote the under represented groups, then you reinforce the bias and prejudice of the past that has resulted in that imbalance today.

[codejunky]

Re: Hmm

@jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid

"Ask yourself why are there no females available?"

According to the article they were busy.

"If you don't make the effort to be more inclusive and actively promote the under represented groups, then you reinforce the bias and prejudice of the past that has resulted in that imbalance today."

And to go trying to single out women to complain one isnt there is sexist. What if it was an all female group? Are there any disabled? Trans? What about skin colours? Heights? Weights? Has it been inclusive of everything that has nothing to do with why they are there? Or did they invite the people with the skills, some were busy so a group was made of those who were willing and had the skills to do it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hmm

I have had the pleasure to work with women in tech and security, and I can't say they're not every bit as competent.

The bank we collaborate with also has quite a few on the team and their gender is not an issue unless you specifically want to make it one (at which point you'd be an idiot, but I digress). On a professional level it has no impact, and if it has for anyone on a personal level, well, that's their problem to address.

[DarkwavePunk]

What?

So they did try to invite female security experts but either didn't hear back or they couldn't fit it in their schedule. That and there are a limited number of women in the field with a broad reach. The idea that the men that did accept should have looked into the makeup of the panel and quit in protest because it wasn't diverse enough seems a bit silly.

[Paul Kinsler]

Re: So they did try

It's thing that when you try to increase diversity on some sort of panel, committee, or whatever by inviting the under-represented, it somewhat tends to be from the same smallish pool of "obvious" candidates from the pool of the under-represented who get invited. However, these are people who are very possibly quite busy already, and so maybe are starting to decline some of the invites, however much they might -- ordinarily -- be inclined to "fly the flag", as it were, by attending. This also happens with the over-represented, but since there are many more of them, it's very much less of an issue.

The solution, of course, is to try to widen the pool of "the under-represented" candidates and not just plump straight for those with the highest profile.

[simonlb]

Re: What?

And one of those same female professionals in the field goes on to complain about the lack of representation in the infosec industry, but then goes on to call this event 'a crumb', not worthy of her time and states this is why her and other women are not engaging with events like this. You can't have it both ways. If you pull back from engaging with events in your chosen industry for 'reasons' you can't then complain you're not being represented at those same events because you chose not to go.

[jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid]

Re: What?

"So they did try to invite female security experts but either didn't hear back or they couldn't fit it in their schedule"

The example in the article of a woman (Katie Paxton-Fear) being unable to make it isn't entirely accurate. Follow the link in the article to Katie's response on LinkedIn and it's clear that rather than being unavailable, they consciously chose not to engage with the organisers.

"Just to be totally clear: I was offered a spot this year I intentionally ghosted them because I didn’t want to be involved after some winners did not get prizes, some creators were unpaid and some were paid very low compared to others, and some key folks no longer work at the company and I just didn’t want to work with them"

[An_Old_Dog]

Influencers

They recruited "influencers" as teachers-of-tech.

WTF?

[MiguelC]

So, Michelle L criticized the company and the men that accepted, because women weren't in the panel. Then she tells us that "It is why I and others have moved away from tech and cyber events"

FFS, can't she see she's part of the problem?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Truly representative

Are 50% of the panel AI generated deep fakes ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Under‑represented Source Code

How would the genetic inheritance of an individual affect the quality of the source code?

[Winkypop]

Unbelievable

“Onboarding”

[pmelon]

The (or one of the) CEO(s) of TryHackMe went full on AI bro, so this tracks. Cancelled my subscription when he went mad - not paying for AI slop.

[Cav]

I'm a feminist and mysogeny is real but this case is ridiculous. Women were asked but didn't respond or said they were busy. If there is a small pool of women and none of them were available then what were the organisers supposed to do?

[MONK_DUCK]

Kind of feel sorry for THM as it seems like they did attempt to onboard a more diverse group. Though 'possibly', if I was being a little cynical, it was a little unwise to not spot this could have the potential get picked up, and they could have pre-empted it first. If I was THM I'd just chalk it up to a learning experience and move on, I don't think anyone is going to get too worked up over it as a one off.

The comments further around remuneration of the influencers of last year event are, to be honest, just contractual issues. It is down to those specific influencers and THM to work through the issues and probably harden up their own contractual positions so both parties are in agreement prior to the work being carried out. Then if there is a further issue it is just a standard case of contract law.

As someone who sees a lot of graduates and CVs come through, it would be nice to tap into all the unused talent out there and not see them run off into the finance industry.

[Mike VandeVelde]

CLICK BAIT

"Backlash". Hyperbole. Anybody who cared about any person or entity mentioned in this article? How about now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Transparency

Fine. Maybe organizations should just list their invitation lists with each name annotated as to whether they responded, declined or accepted. Along with each named gender, race, religion and nationality. And the fields demographics for those categories. The most any fair-minded person could ask is the lists demographics for the invited try to match the fields demographics. Any other goal for the invitation list reflects bias.

[John_Ericsson]

Over a decade ago several UK universities signed up the the "gender blind" application process. Anything that could indicate gender was removed from the process until interview. The goal was to remove the subconscious (and I guess conscious) bias against females.

(The initiative was not just academy and it was embraced in commercial environments. I recall several stories on Radio 4 about it)

Obviously the HR staff were clapping their hands together in excitement, and to be fair the IT managers at my university were all for it. I too was more than happy to play a part (selecting candidates for interview).

Years later I asked why it was never implemented, and was told it resulted in less women being invited for interview.

I can see why that should be.

[sabroni]

Years later I asked why it was never implemented...

Cool story bro.

Got any data? Sounds like a study like that should have some output beyond "I was told...."

[Claude Yeller]

Re: Anything that could indicate gender was removed

If there is anything that "AI" has taught us, it is how difficult it is to hide gender, SES, ethnicity etc from an application.

For instance, in academic tenure applications, women more often than men have a gap in their work history than men. One of the obvious reasons is maternity leave which still is mostly a woman's thing.

Getting a good academic assistant professorship with a gap in your research is difficult if they select based on publications/grants by age, which is very often done.

Then we do not even touch on that thing where women defeminize their author names as female first authors are less easily published and less cited.

All in all, setting up really blind evaluation is devilishly difficult.

[MONK_DUCK]

The main problem I see when reading CVs from women is they don't lie anywhere near as much as the guys do.

The guys on the whole lie more and make stuff up or embellish the details, net result is that they get more interviews.

So a result like this really would not shock me at all, and it doesn't mean the guys must be better they just tend to get more interviews (it's a numbers game).

[David Austin]

Surprised

I'm surprised Katie Paxton-Fear's LinkedIn post wasn't fully quoted in the article;

"Just to be totally clear: I was offered a spot this year I intentionally ghosted them because I didn’t want to be involved after some winners did not get prizes, some creators were unpaid and some were paid very low compared to others, and some key folks no longer work at the company and I just didn’t want to work with them"

That sounds like just as big an issue as the gender breakdown, if not a contributing factor; if Katie's experience isn't an outlier, then it sounds like TryHackMe are expecting work "For Exposure"

[An_Old_Dog]

Re: Surprised

"Doing it for the exposure": The Oatmeal cartoon here-->

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/exposure

[Sgtkeebler]

I am going to be one of those people who says, I don't care what influencer is on TryHackMe Advent of Cyber. The only thing I care about, is the content good?