Strategies for Pursuing Diversity in Cybersecurity and IT

In this day and age, with the threats that the nation faces, the U.S. military’s and the industry’s embracement of diversity and inclusivity will bring strength to cybersecurity, information technology (IT) and signal operations, leaders say.

“I have found that the more you have a diverse group of different backgrounds, different expertise, different experiences, especially in the cyber space, we always come with a strong solution and solution that will actually help us,” said cybersecurity expert Hala Strohmier Berry, who is an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina-Aiken, on a panel at AFCEA International’s TechNet Augusta, held Aug. 19-22 in Augusta, Georgia.

“Because the fight we have right now as a nation in cybersecurity is not with the country next door,” Strohmier Berry said. "It could be from anywhere, all over the globe, from Russia to China to Korea. [You need] members on your team that understand the culture of those different countries and that ‘signature of attack’ to stay ahead of the game and stop the attack before even it happens. That is why I'm very active about inclusivity, because of the different thinking it brings to the table.”

The panel was a feature of AFCEA’s IDEA initiative for inclusion, diversity, equity and accessability, from the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Committee, chaired by longtime AFCEA member Alvie Johnson, who also serves as an AFCEA regional vice president and is a senior vice president of business development at Data Systems Analysts. 

Strohmier Berry was joined on the panel by Command Sgt. Maj. Lisa Gandy, USA, commandant, Noncommissioned Officers Academy (NCOA), Fort Eisenhower; Kenneth McNeill, chief information officer, J-6 and director, C4 Systems Directorate, U.S. National Guard Bureau; and Sable Miller, information technology project manager, U.S. Army Forces Command.

Maj. Gandy, the first female commandant of NCOA, and a signal NCO, called on current leaders to recruit young people into cyber and signal. The commandant emphasized that sometimes the best way to pull in diversity is to have a diverse group of leaders doing the recruiting.

“We are part of the larger recruiting effort across the Army in particular and the DoD [Department of Defense] ... but we are also all recruiters,” she said. “So every time I go out and I talk to young people about what I do, the more diverse we are within the field, the more diverse are the people who are going to be interested in coming in. Because you need to see that it is an opportunity for you. When you walk into an organization, you look at the command boards. You want to see people who look like you and know that those opportunities exist.”

Given its range of forces across America, the National Guard Bureau does have an inherently geographically diverse population, McNeill shared.

“In our case, in the National Guard Bureau, because we are in 54 states and territories, we do a really good job at leveraging talent in all of the states and territories,” he said. “We are going to institutions that have a different, diverse population.”

Nevertheless, creating a diverse workforce in cybersecurity and information technology has to be deliberate, the panelists said.

“Be intentional about your hiring,” Miller specified. “Be very intentional about where you are and who you need and what you need in your organization or your business. Everyone wants to fill a spot, everyone wants to take a job, but just have a real conversation about ‘this is what we're looking for.’”

“You can't get to diversity in the cybersecurity mission space if you don't start early,” McNeill noted. “Going to those universities and colleges that are diverse, using HBCUs, historically black institutions, for example. We have to go across boundaries in this mission space. One practice that we use in the Guard and that companies are starting to do is going to the areas where there is diversity. And you have to start early.”

Miller also offered several practices she learned from other military or industry leaders to grow a culture of diversity within an IT organization.

“For building our teams, we use the ‘SWOT analysis’ a lot,” she explained. “That is strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Before moving forward with a hiring panel, we first identify what is it that we need most. We definitely like to look at our weaknesses as a team and opportunities of advancements. And we try to fill that position to give that person a sense of purpose on day one, and it also fills in the SWOT that we actually need.”

Leveraging a practice learned from a University of North Carolina executive development course, Miller also recommended the “stick your toe in” method as a way to see where more inclusivity and diversity of thought might be needed in an organization. Her instructor, a former Google senior manager, had developed a practice of rotating so-called “floaters,” or various personnel, through different groups of the organization.

“He said, ‘How do you test if the water is still hot? You stick your toe in,’” Miller shared. “He would take a person from a different section and he would ‘float’ them to another section, and they would ‘put their toe in the water.’ They would attend the meetings and see if they could relate with them and bring some type of value and be accepted. And then they would do it again another 90 days, and they report that back to a senior leader to see if it was ‘still hot’ in that section.”

The cyber mission is so large, and the need to fill positions will continue for the foreseeable future, the panelists agreed.

And as such, leaders must continue to build a bridge to the younger generation with diversity in mind.

“The more that we get out and show young people that this is a field that is open to everyone—as long as you meet the credentials and the background requirements—we will continue to gradually grow more and more diverse across the signal and cyber fields,” Maj. Gandy noted.