Although large enterprises allocate significant resources to cybersecurity, many haven’t considered how they can tap into the unique perspectives of individuals in underserved communities. How can enterprises partner with community-based organizations to expand the pool of diverse and skilled cyber talent while creating a safer digital global community? Non-profits like Girl Security empower girls and young women from underrepresented communities with the skills, experiences, networks and support needed to become safer digital citizens and pursue fulfilling cybersecurity careers. In this episode, our experts discuss their initiatives to promote a more accessible and inclusive cybersecurity community, highlighting the importance of mentorship, diverse talent, and corporate partnerships. Featured experts • Lauren Buitta, Founder and CEO, Girl Security • Amulya Panakam, Program Assistant of Membership and Professional Development, Girl Security • Pam Hacker, Vice President of Social Impact, Kyndryl
Although large enterprises allocate significant resources to cybersecurity, many haven’t considered how they can tap into the unique perspectives of individuals in underserved communities. How can enterprises partner with community-based organizations to expand the pool of diverse and skilled cyber talent while creating a safer digital global community? Non-profits like Girl Security empower girls and young women from underrepresented communities with the skills, experiences, networks and support needed to become safer digital citizens and pursue fulfilling cybersecurity careers.
In this episode, our experts discuss their initiatives to promote a more accessible and inclusive cybersecurity community, highlighting the importance of mentorship, diverse talent, and corporate partnerships.
Featured experts
Sarah B. Nelson 00:00
Hello, and welcome to The Progress Report. I'm your host, Sarah. B. Nelson, Chief Design Officer for Kyndryl Vital. And we have a fantastic conversation today. And specifically we're going to address a really interesting area, which is about cybersecurity in underserved communities. And looking at that relationship between large enterprises who allocate a lot of resources to cybersecurity, and that kind of contrast between individuals and smaller organizations in underserved communities, who often don't have that same access to the tools, to the knowledge, and to the skills, and that leaves these folks vulnerable to online threats. We're also going to discuss how large enterprises can contribute to that expanding pool of diverse and skilled talent and create a safe digital experience for the broader global community. So we have some fantastic guests today, and I just want to welcome you all. We have Lauren Buitta, Amulya Panakam, and Pam Hacker. Lauren is the founder and CEO of Girl Security, and one of the most influential people in security, according to Security Magazine. And then we have Amulya Panakam, and she's a third year computer science student at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and she's a program assistant in Girl Security, working on mentorship and professional development. And Pam is Kyndryl's Vice President of Social Impact, leading the global strategy for social impact, driving progress into our 60 countries and the diverse communities where Kyndryls live and work. So Lauren, I want to start with you. Can you tell us a little bit about Girl Security?
Lauren Buitta 01:37
Yeah, so Girls Security is a national nonprofit organization, and we're really leveraging the insights and skill sets of vulnerable populations and underrepresented populations of girls, women and gender minority youth to transform both how we think about pathways into security, including cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, but also how we think about shaping solutions to the security challenges that these technologies represent.
Sarah B. Nelson 02:04
And then, Amulya, how did you get involved with Girl Security?
Amulya Panakam 02:04
Yeah, funny enough, I was actually reflecting on this. I remember seeing a social media post when I was a junior in high school, and they were talking about being a mentee for their mentorship program, which I now help run, which is so fun and exciting and really full circle. And to be honest, I had never really considered a career in national security. It was really unconventional in my family. It was like, be a doctor, an engineer or a lawyer, and those are my three options. And so this is just something I really wanted to explore.
Sarah B. Nelson 02:37
And Pam, we're going to talk a lot more about enterprise, but I'm curious about what is Kyndryl's sort of approach to this?
Pam Hacker 02:45
In general, how we look at social impact is how we support communities where our Kyndryls work and live, and whether that's supporting underserved or under resourced communities or finding ways to skill up our young and truthfully new generations coming into tech, we're constantly looking for ways of how we can give back. It's truthfully part of how we as Kyndryls operate. It's how we do business, and it makes perfect sense of how we give back to the communities on a daily basis.
Sarah B. Nelson 03:22
So Lauren, this one's for you. What are the underrepresented communities that are most at risk from cyber threats?
Lauren Buitta 03:31
I mean, the name of our organization sort of speaks to at least the focus for us. We really believe that vulnerable, especially communities of girls and women, and in the communities we're serving which are considered lower income, these communities also lack access to public transportation, access to schools and some communities, health and wellness, and also our food deserts. So in our mind, these populations understand insecurity and vulnerability more than anyone else, because on top of that, there's so little emphasis on the importance of the role of girls in spaces like cybersecurity and related pathways. And I had the opportunity yesterday to visit with one of our new high school clinics on the south side of Chicago, and this is a community that's bordered by gang violence and has been largely under invested in and within that community we're serving, we had a number of girls who were interested in cybersecurity, but it was certainly not on the menu for them, even among their school counselors and college and career associates. So for us, that population, which is so untapped but so deeply understands insecurity, has such unique insights to lend to how we think about not just cybersecurity, but I think broadly, security for society. And so we really put our emphasis on that population, and it's a national population. We have supported small global populations of girls and young women in Afghanistan, the Republic of Georgia, and other countries, but primarily we're focused on those communities throughout the United States.
Sarah B. Nelson 05:03
So Lauren, I'm curious about small organizations and the kinds of unique cybersecurity challenges that they face. Could you talk a little bit about that?
Lauren Buitta 05:13
Yeah, I think there's different types of institutions that present different challenges. Certainly the institutions that we work most closely with, our schools and community-based organizations. And there it's a matter of lack of capacity and lack of resources. In other words, schools are overstretched, as we well know, and their attempts to account for things like chronic absenteeism, mental health, literacy rates, and so the sort of added challenge of layering in cybersecurity support. It's a challenge that I think schools are becoming more aware of and implementing certain tools. But I think at scale, we have a long way to go. I would say smaller businesses are also highly vulnerable, speaking as sort of an entrepreneur, as someone who founded something, I think cybersecurity, if not for the knowledge that I had, would be very low on the checklist of ensuring that I had a profitable business that supported my family and community. So I think small businesses, as well as community-based organizations, including churches or other faith-based institutions and affordable housing organizations. And Girl Security does a lot of one-off trainings with those community-based organizations. But again, you're talking about small, localized institutions that have limited capacity, limited resources and just limited awareness and access to that type of information.
Amulya Panakam 06:28
I can think of many cybersecurity challenges like social engineering, misinformation, disinformation, cyberbullying, like deepfakes and AI. I almost look at this perspective in how my generation responds to these threats and how they will continue to respond to these threats in the future. There's this big misconception that because Gen Z is so chronically online that we are aware of deepfakes and we are able to easily identify different cybersecurity threats. But that's not necessarily true. And so I look at my peers, and frankly, I look at myself. I have made many cybersecurity like "no-no's" and things I should not be doing, and I just wonder, as it gets harder, how am I supposed to be able to adapt and grow and make sure that I'm being really cognizant of my data and my privacy? To go back to your original question about unique challenges that institutions might face, I think a good way of phrasing that is, what unique challenges will Gen Z face, and how will they continue to adapt and learn and I guess perceive those struggles?
Pam Hacker 07:32
When we look at cyber and cybersecurity on the impact side here at Kyndryl, we also are training elderly women in rural India who have started their own businesses on how to be cyber secure. So when you talk about that intergenerational, it's the Amulyas of the world, and then it's these women who I'm dying to meet one day in India, because we all know we don't have these tools, and in order for, whether it's a small business or a nonprofit organization or a faith-based organization, that we all are at risk, right? So how do we continue to bring awareness and tools and education to this work?
Sarah B. Nelson 08:16
Well, so you're actually telegraphing my next question, which is really just about partnerships between the large enterprises and smaller organizations. First of all, let's just talk about how you all work together?
Pam Hacker 08:28
This is a beautiful and fruitful partnership that works both ways. And when we look at, from a Kyndryl perspective, Girl Security is one of our foundation grantees, and this is our first year of grants, and they're exactly the kind of partner that we are looking for when we grant out our foundation dollars. And we know that it's not just our responsibility, but it's the importance of not just funding, but really partnering with organizations in a 360 degree partnership that we're learning from them and they're learning from us. We know that we have experts here at Kyndryl who are experts in cybersecurity. So how can we not just financially support their organization, but how could we bring in our incredible, especially female experts here at Kyndryl to support and really foster and grow the work that Girl Security is doing. This is just the beginning of our work together and truthfully, we know that whether it's tech companies or media companies, orwhatever the brand is, to foster and look for these kinds of relationships and partnerships, because they're in the communities, they're doing the work, and they're reaching the people.
Sarah B. Nelson 09:49
One thing that this makes me think of as I'm following one of your threads, is just women in the discipline of cybersecurity to begin with. I mean, my understanding is that it's a very underrepresented group. Can you tell us a little bit more about what the current environment looks like for women?
Amulya Panakam 10:06
So, I am a woman in STEM. I go to a male-dominated engineering school. I'm one of very few women in my classes, and I often look around and I'm like, "Where is the community and the support?" It can feel very isolating, especially when you're not doing good in the class, or you're wondering why your male counterparts are doing significantly better than you, and frankly, it's because they have community. And so sometimes I look back and if I didn't have the support of my mentor through Girl Security or a community I could surround myself with and gain that support I need to succeed in my classes, I'm not sure what I would do, and so I think it's really fundamental that organizations like Girl Security exist to give women representation that is so desperately needed. So when you look around, it's like you can feel like you're drowning and you're not sure where to go to so I think it's really important that we have organizations like Girl Security. And I think that when it comes to like partnerships with corporations, I think it's so important that corporations partner because they can provide funding resources with nonprofits who kind of do the grassroots types of work.
Sarah B. Nelson 11:23
Well, I mean, it's interesting. So you also work a lot on mentorship and professional development for girls who are in the program. Can you talk a little bit about what you do?
Amulya Panakam 11:32
Yeah, so I work on the mentorship and professional development side. So Girl Security offers two mentorship seasons and one calendar year. We're doing a winter one and a summer one, and they're each three months long. And what's really nice is that we have mentees who have different varying levels of interest in national security, from beginning to intermediate to advanced. And so it's really nice to connect them with a mentor who can help fulfill their needs. And something that we do in our mentorship program is we focus on, like, coaching-inspired mentorship. And so that's basically like a two-way street. We want our mentor and our mentees to grow both, and we want them to listen actively. We want them to come out of the mentorship feeling like they've both successfully grown in some way. And so it's really inspiring to hear testimonies of girls who come in not knowing what national security is but leave with like, "Okay, I'm definitely gonna work in this field. I have charted a path forward. I have a support system." And so it's really nice that we have mentors at varying level of experiences who kind of can match our needs of our mentees.
Lauren Buitta 12:33
And I'd just add I think the mentorship is really critical to the success of the program, because we are going into high school level participants, and they can enter our mentoring program at 14 or 15, then they can complete our workforce training program. But after that, we don't want them to feel like there isn't a net for them. So between the professional advancement, the career coaching and the continued mentorship, it is a reassurance to them that we won't disappear once they complete one aspect of the program.
Sarah B. Nelson 13:07
You're working with high school. Amulya is in college. So what is the journey of one of the members of your program?
Lauren Buitta 13:14
I mean, I think Amulya kind of represents it. You know, she began as a high school student. That's sort of the ideal, it's that even based on the social science behind when girls and women start to question their STEM capabilities, which is actually in middle school, if not earlier. By high school, we're capturing them at a really critical waypoint where they may or may not be considering college and/or career, and so ideally, they enter the mentoring program and really just trust the organization and have a positive mentoring experience. And if they decide that there's a pathway they want to pursue, then we want to see them apply to our workforce program, which is very robust. Once they complete the workforce program, they have an opportunity to complete a cybersecurity certification with Google or an AI fundamentals or a open threat intelligence model with Microsoft Security, so they have different avenues available to them. I mean, that's the ideal. And then sort of the final frontier is that they become a mentor to someone else. So fostering that cycle of mentorship and giving back is also not just an effective way to keep people involved, but it ensures that as they advance into the workforce, that they bring all of those values with them into their communities and their workplaces as well.
Pam Hacker 14:28
Lauren, I mean I could listen to you and Amulya talk all day. And as I think about also being a female in tech, although, you know, I'm new to this space, because of my background is entertainment and media. But as I've been at Kyndryl a little over a year now, what I have learned, and I have really loved seeing, is our female leaders really pay attention to this space. And when I look at leaders like Kris Lovejoy, who's one of our global leads of security and resilience, and when I look at our North American president, Amy Salcido, who are just dying for young women to enter the world of tech and really pay attention to that, there's a lot to be said about that. Nothing's better than when we have students like yourself Amulya come into the Kyndrl offices and a light bulb go off to say, "Huh? That could be me, right?" And whether they are going to be in cyber or other. You only know what you know and you don't know what you don't know, right? So when it's put in front of you and you see a young girl's life just really change at the thought of a conversation of, "Oh, I didn't even know that was on a career path." It's nice to be in a culture, and it's obviously Girl Security is like that, but it's nice to be in a corporate culture that really pays attention to that. And I think, you know, finding like minded partners like we did. I mean, obviously, Lauren is leading an incredible organization there, and a lot of it is relationship building, and we just clearly really hit it off. So a lot of it is that, but the work that Girl Security is doing just so aligns with the values of our organization.
Amulya Panakam 16:21
I remember when I was in middle school, a lot of this felt unattainable, like I could never reach a point where I could ever be in this career orever succeed in this career. But I think that as I did the fellowship and I did the mentorship, I gained a lot more confidence. And it was actually through our corporate partnerships that really gave me that boost. In terms of how I could write an article for one of our corporate partnerships. I could help work on a real life project. And it kind of all made sense. All the puzzles were starting to come together. And so when I entered college, it kind of gave me a sense of morale in the sense, you know. I have real life experience. I have a support system.
Sarah B. Nelson 16:55
There are business and and societal reasons to have diversity around lived experience it's that we really, in design, I believe strongly that the people designing for people using something should represent that community and have the lived experiences, because we'll see something different. And so I guess that's what I'm curious about how that translates into security. How does having this different lived experience give you an advantage? I don't know.
Lauren Buitta 17:24
One of the young girls I met with yesterday, her family originated outside of the United States and had interactions with international organized crime, right? And so her experience was very much shaped by, "I want to go into technology, and I want to create this mechanism that will solve for this harm." We hear that story time and time again. If I had $1 for every time we heard a story like that, we would be conquering the universe and all the best ways to see girls and young women who have already had security experiences that some people hopefully don't have to fathom. They not only bring a set of insights and skills and perspectives, but they also bring, in our minds, a sense of societal resilience that we need because we know there is no full sense of security within the digital ecosystem. There will always be vulnerabilities, and nobody understands that better than girls and women who grow up never knowing what it means to be fully secure regardless of your circumstances. And I think we really imagine a world in which responses to things like cybersecurity or generative AI leverage and bring to bear that sort of mosaic of perspectives. And we see it in participants in our program as young as 12, 13, 14, 15, up to Amulya and beyond. And I think, you know, there's plenty of data and studies that various really prominent institutions have done about the impact of diversity on outcomes and on profitability. I believe in all of that, but I think the narratives that are shared in our program are more powerful than the data oftentimes. We adhere assiduously to the idea that it's not our job to tell girls and women what to think about what they are learning in our organization. We frame it as we will explain the history of how these things have developed and are currently being deployed, but we want to empower them with things like design thinking challenges, opportunities to engage with thought leaders, to inform policy and law making through their lived experience. So we're giving them the tools to craft their own voice and message, and then leveraging the power of our networks to get those voices heard. And we've had a lot of success doing that, but there's a lot more work to be done, of course.
Sarah B. Nelson 19:39
You're giving the women, in addition to being able to do technical things, they're able to put it into a context to figure out really what's that gnarly problem we're trying to solve, and how do we creatively solve it? All of that is to say, I'm just saying, like, yes! Yes, Girl Security!
Pam Hacker 19:57
Yeah, Sarah and to have conversations like this. Really open, transparent conversations with public or private organizations, to really put up on the forefront of bringing these issues front and center. And at the same time it's giving back to Kyndryls also, right? Our leaders and our people want to be part of these conversations, solutions, community, impact. I mean, it's part of our culture, and I hope that other companies that you guys partner with, that their culture is seeking that same kind of connection. We know we're the experts in certain things, but you guys are really on the ground lifting up that next generation of female tech leaders and innovators and creators and who doesn't want to be a part of that?
Lauren Buitta 20:51
I don't know. I do.
Pam Hacker 20:52
I know. I know you do. Lauren, you are. You made it happen.
Amulya Panakam 20:56
I'd like to add a couple of words. I'm not sure what I'll do with my degree, but I do know that I do want to make institutional and fundamental change, especially in a corporate setting, because that's where it starts. It all trickles down, you know? And I know that I can do that because I have a community, and I have a community right here just talking to you guys. I feel supported. I know that I want to make these changes. I can make these changes. I'm glad we're having a conversation about it because it's just doesn't that doesn't happen very often, you know, it doesn't happen very often. So I'm grateful that we're able to sit down and talk about this.
Sarah B. Nelson 21:28
Amulya, while we're on and with you, what advice do you have for students and professionals? But I think in particular, students who might be interested to enter the cybersecurity community?
Amulya Panakam 21:40
That's a good one. So I used to be very insecure about maybe my weaknesses or things like my background. For example, I am hearing impaired, and so I was thinking that's a deficit, but no, in fact, it's not a deficit. It's an advantage. All your skills and your entire personality, whatever makes you, is an advantage in every single way. Leverage that. I used to be so afraid of things that might cause a setback, but I've learned to really embrace my full sense, my full body. And I think that I've been able to do that because I've been so grateful enough to be given a support system that empowers me to do what I want to do despite everything. And so leverage everything you have. You bring things to the table. Realize that. You may not think it, but I know I bring things to the table. You bring things to the table. Every unique part of you is a leverage. It is something that you can leverage.
Sarah B. Nelson 22:33
Well, how about you, Lauren, what would be some advice to people interested?
Lauren Buitta 22:38
I have to give a shout out to our learning and training team, Shannon Harrison, Monica Sanchez, Jane Pak, and Gina Bennett. But Shannon said something actually at the summer program where we were joined by Kyndryls. She said, "It's not enough to just tell people they belong. It's important to tell them that we want them and need them here." And so I think that's the message that I continue to take to schools and communities. It's that we want you to be here. We need you to be here. The future of so many different things requires and necessitates the involvement of diverse people broadly, but certainly girls and women. So I think that message is something that I will continue to reiterate and bring to the people in the communities we serve.
Sarah B. Nelson 23:19
All right, well, I actually don't want to end this conversation, because I feel like we could talk and there's so much more ground to cover, but I really appreciate the three of you coming and having this conversation with me. I can't really underscore the importance of having these conversations. I think we're all in violent agreement about that. So thank you so much for joining.
Amulya Panakam 23:39
Thank you so much for having us.
Pam Hacker 23:41
Thanks, Amulya. Thanks, Lauren. Thank you. Sarah.
Sarah B. Nelson 23:46
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