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What is Minorities in Cybersecurity (MiC)?

In a word? Community. 

Minorities in Cybersecurity (MiC) was developed out of a unique passion to help fill the gap that exists in the support and development of women and minority leaders in the cybersecurity field. It is our mission to provide practical knowledge, training, development, and support to our members with the sole purpose of preparing them to become the next generation of global cybersecurity leaders.     

Our Vision

The vision for MiC is to provide a community for underrepresented talent where they can find much needed leadership development and training opportunities to assist them on their cybersecurity career journey.

• MiC Aspirers™ are defined as those professionals looking to get into the cybersecurity space. Whether they are in college, college graduates, or transitioning.
• MiC Builders™ are defined as those in their first cybersecurity role and building their subject matter expertise in the field.
• MiC Communicators™ are those individual contributors moving to people leadership.
• MiC Directors™ are those in or moving into an executive level role. 

Why the Need for MiC?

The shortage of talent in the cybersecurity industry is well documented. To make it even harder organizations of all types are having difficulty attracting, maintaining, and promoting to higher levels their diverse talent. Despite the vast amount of diversity and inclusion groups, there has not been any significant gains to the presence of women and minorities in the cybersecurity industry.

The question has always been where do we start to attempt to fix the problem? This is hard work! However, just like there is no silver bullet solution to solve all your cybersecurity risks, there is not just one way to tackle the underrepresented talent in the cybersecurity industry problem. Organizations should think of this like the cybersecurity concept of “Defense in Depth” which means there are multiple ways to protect an organization from cybersecurity threats. MiC chooses to tackle the problem with what we call “DEI in Depth,” by providing programs to support an individual in all aspects of leadership development and in addition working with organizations to educate on the unique needs of underrepresented talent.

In any given environment there can be many answers to the question about a lack of diversity at the highest level of an organization. However, one reason is consistently top of mind, a lack of training and support. From the time an individual enters an entry level position and at every promotional opportunity, organizations often fail to understand the unique social, generational, political, cultural, and economic hurdles an individual may face to achieve next level of career success. Oftentimes, an organizations culture can be so homogenized individual differences are seen as barriers to entry as opposed to, what they are, unique opportunities to value different viewpoints and ideas to increase the overall cybersecurity community.  There are numbers to support this. Based on the most recent statistics (2022) we obtained regarding underrepresented Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs), the highest level in our profession, in Fortune 500 companies, 17% identified as Women, 6.6% were Hispanic or Latino, 6.5% were Asian and 3% were Black/African American.

MiC’s position is with the right level of support, resources, and leadership development opportunities we can help fill a void our members may experience at different stages of their career and help them grow to ultimately attain roles at the C-level and beyond.