Women at apex of digital security
Once marginal field is now seen as crucial
Earlier this year, American International Group Inc. added Linda Mills to its board, attracted partly by her expertise in cybersecurity. In February, Wells Fargo & Co. selected Suzanne Vautrinot for its board for similar reasons. Before that, Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. picked Janice Babiak.
All directors, all focused on cybersecurity, all women.
Over the past five years, as data theft has risen to the top of corporate concerns, 16 of the largest U.S. companies have appointed one or more directors with cybersecurity credentials, 10 of them women, a Bloomberg analysis shows. Given the paucity of women in boardrooms — fewer than one in five in the S&P’s 500 Index — the surge has stunned all involved.
“All of a sudden we’re valued,” said Jan Hamby, chancellor at the National Defense University’s iCollege.
“Instead of just being the pain that’s causing people to have 12-character passwords that they change every hour.”
The sudden prominence of women like Hamby can be traced back to the 1980s and ’90s when they began working on software development and big data because those career paths were new and unclaimed.
Linda Hudson, former chief executive officer of defence contractor BAE Systems PLC’s U.S. subsidiary, said many women went through technology while the men in that industry focused on the higher-profile tasks of building tanks and missiles.
“It was a new area where opportunities opened themselves up pretty much to the best qualified,” said Hudson, a cybersecurity-savvy director at Bank of America Corp., Ingersoll-Rand Plc and Southern Co.
That levelled the playing field immensely.”
There was a similar story in the military.
Until the early ’90s, women were barred from certain combat units so they often took back-office jobs in IT and telecommunications. When Hamby entered the U.S. navy in 1980, she was assigned to its Regional Data Automation Center in Washington where most of her coworkers were women.
“You see so many senior women with this kind of specialization in the services,” she said.
“Part of it is just an artifact of our history of limiting women’s opportunities.”
Meanwhile, corporate boards to- day are seeking to broaden membership beyond white men.
The sudden need for cybersecurity, however, is the more important factor.
The touchstone was the 2013 breach at Target Corp., when 40 million credit card numbers were stolen, leading led to the ouster of CEO Gregg Steinhafel, said Peter Metzger, vice-chairman of DHR International Inc., an executive recruiting firm.