As part of Glassdoor’s Equal Pay Day initiative, over 3,000 companies including Security Innovation have taken the Equal Pay Pledge. This is an important day for all companies that take pride in committing to equal pay for equal work.
For Security Innovation, this is another step in our corporate mission to promote and encourage women in the IT security and privacy field. We routinely run equal opportunity pay surveys, but that’s not enough. As a company, we make it clear that it’s not just important to hire women, but to help grow the pool of qualified women in our male-dominated industry. This means equal treatment on the job as well as placing respect first and foremost. It also means contributing in ways that don’t necessarily benefit your company, in the interest of growing that pool of female talent.
We recently announced the spinoff of OnBoard Security, Inc. 35% of this 20-person company is the proud home to female engineers — a role filled by men 92% of the time, according to Stack Overflow's 2015 developer survey. The staff at Security Innovation (SI) has a smaller percentage of female engineers than OnBoard, but certainly not for a lack of trying; we continue to look for qualified candidates to fill current vacancies., In the last 2 years, the percentage of female staff that hold a VP title here has gone from 20% to 40%.
To further help equip women in the male-centric security industry, we also donate our time and software products to educate women on website security. Some examples of this are include:
- Women in Security & Privacy (WISP) in San Francisco - we hosted nearly 100 women last summer in a 4-hour event.
- Working with RSA Security’s CISO Janet Levesque, Security Innovation helped 40 women learn web hacking last October at RSA's Headquarters.
- Michigan Celebration of Women in Computing (MICWIC) - we ran multiple Web site hacking challenges for their members.
- Additionally, we are planning more of these security training events in coming months in Washington, DC and Seattle.
So on Equal Pay Day, I encourage you and your company to join the cause and help women learn, enter, and stay in the security field. Let’s not make this an annual Holiday! #StandForEqualPay
