Teresa López Pavón Malaga

Malaga

Updated Monday, March 11, 2024-00:01

  • Cybersecurity The dangers of selling iris

There is no structural unemployment in the cybersecurity sector.

In fact, there are 40,000 positions that

remain unfilled due to lack of suitable profiles

despite the fact that they are jobs that, due to their specialization and the scarcity of candidates, tend to be better paid.

"And it would be very reasonable for women to have access to at least half of those jobs," emphasizes Mar López, economist and cybersecurity expert at Accenture.

She worked for nine years in the National Security department of the Presidency of the Government, is vice president of the Women4Cyber ​​Spain platform and co-founder of the

Andalusian Women Cyberleaders Forum

, recently created in Malaga.

Only 18% of graduates specialized in this subject are women, according to the Cybersecurity Talent Diagnosis of the Spanish Cybersecurity Institute (INCIBE).

Fighting the gap in qualified sectors

is, in some way, fighting against the wage gap and that is why the Forum of Women Cyberleaders of Andalusia aims to work from the early stages of education to promote vocations.

Why is there still so little interest among women in technological profiles? We are in a very stereotyped sector, which is linked to the image of a young man or teenager in a sweatshirt and hoodie, who lives in front of a computer and has no more life social development than the one developed through screens.

And we must open the eyes of many women to tell them that there is a qualified employment niche here with possible good salaries.

You don't even have to study IT or Telecom to enter the sector.

Cybersecurity departments are a puzzle that is made up of diverse profiles, including professionals from Law, Economics or Journalism.

But it is true that series, movies and the media have imposed a very masculinized image of the hacker, both those who are on the side of evil, trying to break the security systems of companies or governments, and those who fight to stop and cushion these attacks.

And these stereotypes work as a deterrent. Vocations are targeted from an early age.

Should mathematics be taught with a gender perspective? Neither science nor technology have gender.

What we have to do is show them references to these girls, as has happened with women's soccer, for example.

And that's why we want to be seen.

The 40 professionals who are already in the Andalusian Women Cyber ​​Leaders Forum work as a team to build the cybersecurity of the future. There are so many threats that it seems as if the battle was lost beforehand. In military terms, cyberspace is already spoken of as the fifth domain.

But, there are many people who work to create a safer cyberspace, from the technical field, from the communication field, from the regulatory field.

What happens is that the bad guys get paid to continually innovate to find our vulnerabilities.

The cybercrime industry is the third largest in the world.

More collaboration is needed between States and between companies because the threats are global.

There is clearly a need to standardize data protection legislation, because a European user is not protected by European legislation when accessing services or content from companies located outside the borders of the EU. How do I convince my son to Don't sell your iris scanner? Asking you to educate yourself before taking risks.

But I am not in favor of negative discourse about technology.

Biometrics has its risks but it is also a field of opportunities.