I'm posting this in honor of International Women's Day on Mar. 8.
May 6, 2022 "Canada sees 25,000 unfilled cybersecurity jobs as hacking activity soars": Today I found this article by Dina Al-Shibeeb on the Financial Post:
With 25,000 cybersecurity jobs staying vacant in Canada, this growing market is hungry to shore up its recruitments by closing the gender gap, a female keynote speaker told an audience at the Canadian Women in Cybersecurity’s conference in Vaughan on May 4.
Globally, there are 3.5 million unfilled jobs in cybersecurity,
Gina Cody, first woman to receive her PhD designation in building engineering at Concordia University, added.
“This number for sure will go up,” said Cody, who made a historic $15 million gift to Concordia University’s faculty of engineering and computer science in 2018, said.
In North America,
women fill only about 21 per cent of cybersecurity jobs
and even fewer of them hold senior positions in the industry,
Cody added.
“The math here is straightforward,” Cody said.
“If they want to close the employment gap in cybersecurity,
we need to close the gender gap.”
Increased spending
Governments around the world are expected to increase their spending on cybersecurity, and Canada is among them.
Canada’s minister of innovation, science and industry, François-Philippe Champagne,
announced in February that the National Cybersecurity Consortium (NCC)
will receive up to $80 million to lead the Cyber Security Innovation Network (CSIN).
NCC is a not-for-profit consortium, founded in 2020 by five Canadian universities with the goal of bringing together business and government research into cybersecurity.
The consortium collaborates with more than
140 researchers
from 35 post-secondary institutions,
16 large companies,
30 small and medium-sized firms,
26 not-for-profit organizations
and eight governments and governmental organizations across Canada.
This spending on cybersecurity by the government is a boon for the economy too.
According to Statistics Canada, the Canadian cybersecurity industry contributed
over $2.3 billion in GDP
and 22,500 jobs to the Canadian economy in 2018 alone.
But that’s a drop in the bucket compared to what will be coming globally. Research firm Cybersecurity Ventures forecast in a recent report that governments will spend around $1.75 trillion on cybersecurity between 2021 and 2025.
Cybersecurity jobs expected to grow even more
The number of unfilled jobs is expected to grow amid alarming projections that
cybercrime is on the rise worldwide,
and the pandemic only accelerated the trend,
as more companies pivoted online.
In 2021, the Sophos State of Ransomware Report showed that
39 per cent of Canadian businesses were victims of ransomware the prior year,
and 65 per cent of the businesses expect a future ransomware attack.
Ransomware is a type of malware that threatens to publish the victim’s personal data
or perpetually block access to it unless a ransom is paid.
Citing a figure from Cybersecurity Ventures’ Official Cybercrime Report, Cody said in 2021 alone,
cybercrime is estimated to have caused more than US$6 trillion in damage,
up from US$3 trillion in 2015.
“If cybercrime were measured as a country, it would [have] the third largest GDP in the world after the United States and China,” she added. “The world is beginning to realize just how important cybersecurity really is.”
All skill sets needed
In one panel discussing the “absolute joy of being a woman in cybersecurity,” women panelists sought to dispel some myths surrounding the industry. Those include having to be a math whiz.
“If you have more soft skills, like myself in communications and policy, there’s an area for you,” said Julia Le, a cybersecurity education and awareness manager at the government of Ontario.
“If you want to get into the ethical hacking team and break into systems really, ethically, and make sure that our software and programs are secure enough, well, yes, you will need a computer science background,” said Le, who has a master’s degree in public policy.
One of the panelists, Eman Hammad, cyber-physical security and resilience at PwC, told the audience that she sees the industry as “mosaic,” with people able to bring all their diverse experiences into the mix.
“Especially in cybersecurity, you can bring all [of] yourself,
you can bring yourself as a technology expert,
you can bring yourself as a people person,
you are working with clients and trying to understand their challenges.
You can bring yourself, all your skills,” Hammad said.
Most importantly, cybersecurity is not unlike police work; it’s about protecting the public.
“You wake up every morning and say that today is the day I can make a difference, even if it’s small,” Hammad said.
This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.
Canada sees 25,000 unfilled cybersecurity jobs as hacking activity soars | Financial Post
Dec. 1, 2022 "Facebook job ads illegally discriminate, female truckers say": Today I found Josh Eidelson on the Financial Post:
Meta Platforms Inc. “routinely discriminates” in steering job ads to specific age and gender groups on its Facebook platform, a women’s truckers organization alleged in a United States civil rights complaint.
“Facebook’s algorithm regularly acts like recruiters in the 1960s (and even later), who identified jobs as ‘Male’ or ‘Female’ based on gender stereotypes or indicated their preferences to hire younger workers,”
the nonprofit Real Women in Trucking said Thursday in a filing with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Data culled from Facebook’s own online ad library shows that the algorithm selected to receive certain job listings
were more than 99 per cent male
and 99 per cent younger than age 55,
even though the employers had asked that they be shown to people of all ages and genders, according to the complaint.
On the platform,
“older job seekers are usually far less likely than younger job seekers to receive job ads,
and men receive the lion’s share of ads for blue-collar jobs,
especially jobs in industries that have historically excluded women,” Real Women in Trucking claims.
“Meanwhile, women receive a disproportionate share of ads for lower-paid jobs in
social services,
food services,
education,
and health care,
especially administrative positions
that are historically considered women’s jobs.”
A Meta spokesperson said the company is reviewing the complaint and has been working to prevent discrimination and make its ads more transparent.
“Addressing fairness in ads is an industrywide challenge and we’ve been collaborating with
civil rights groups,
academics
and regulators
to advance fairness in our ads system,”
the company said in an emailed statement.
“We’re actively building technology designed to make additional progress in this area.”
Decades-old U.S. civil rights laws prohibit job or housing ads that indicate a preference based on sex or age,
and federal agencies have determined that using those criteria to target online ads violates such prohibitions.
“While Facebook has been warned for years by civil rights advocates and regulators that algorithmic bias is likely to be a serious problem on its platform and would violate a range of civil rights laws,
Facebook has failed to stop the algorithmic discrimination that occurs in most cases when Facebook publishes job ads throughout the nation,” the truckers group said in its complaint.
In June, Meta agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice that alleged Facebook’s housing ad system discriminated based on characteristics such as race, disability and sex.
In 2019, the company settled lawsuits and complaints brought by groups that included
the American Civil Liberties Union
and the Communications Workers of America.
As part of that agreement, Facebook said it would no longer let advertisers target job or housing postings based on age or gender.
Thursday’s complaint credits the company with taking “meaningful steps” required by that settlement.
“But Facebook’s own algorithm has replicated the same problem,” the truckers’ group claims.
“This is a problem not just on Facebook, but likely on a lot of other platforms,” Real Women in Trucking attorney Peter Romer-Friedman, who also represented plaintiffs in the 2019 settlement, said in an interview.
“What these extreme disparities tell us is that
algorithmic bias is going to be a problem
unless you prevent it
and eliminate it consciously.”
Facebook job ads illegally discriminate, female truckers say | Financial Post
Don't worry, the trudeau/singh government is working on a bill that will see their advertising gone in Canada soon!
Filing a lawsuit complaining that you are not receiving the correct targeted advertising. Am I reading this right? I don't know anyone who goes to facebook to find a job.
It's more annoying leftist nonsense.
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