‘Brains more important than gender in tech field’

Gender should not play a role in technology but brains matter, says InfoWatch president Natalya Kaspersky ( pic), whose name is synonymous with the widely used anti-hacking and anti-virus software.

Speaking at IFSEC Southeast Asia 2017, she said she believes that the proportion of male and female employees is changing in the tech industry, though not in the development side.

“There are still more men in that sector, but it shouldn’t matter. If a person develops a breakthrough technology, the sex of the person shouldn’t matter. It is the technology that matters,” she added.

The 51-year-old co-founded security firm Kaspersky Lab in 1997 with her then husband Eugene, and headed the company as CEO for 10 years.

After she parted ways with Kaspersky Lab in 2007, she continued her work at InfoWatch, which was originally a small project within the company.

During the talk, Kaspersky shared the Data Leak Analysis: Globally vs Southeast Asia Report 2016/2017, which found that government and military leaks were the highest in South-East Asia at 43.2% (versus 13.1% globally) compared to leaks in other industries such as healthcare, banks and finance, and education.

Employees caused 48.8% of the leaks, followed by external intruders (41.9%), C-level executives (4.7%), and IT staff and ex-employees (both 2.3%).