Women's Day: Those who don't want women in cyber, will meet them in the darknet - voila! Of money

Those who do not grant full equality of opportunity to women in the defensive cyber companies, will still find them on the Darknet (Photo: ShutterStock)

Women's Day has arrived and with it also a study from a surprising direction: Trend Micro Global researchers found that at least 30% of cybercriminal forum users are women.

It turns out that the glass ceiling being breached in the relatively male cyber world also comes from the offensive direction and not only from the security and defense areas.

The study tried to find out where there are talented information security engineers looking for work, and found fascinating data about gender equality in the world of online crime and on the Darknet.

Trend Micro tested five online cybercrime forums in English - Sinister, Cracked, Breached, Hackforums and Raidforum, and five other sites in Russian - XSS, Exploit, Vavilon, BHF and WWH-Club.

By means of technological monitoring, and also a little through common sense, the researchers managed to overcome the difficulty in gender identification that exists in forums where most users are anonymous.

In cyber companies, maybe you pay more attention to connections, but in the world of crime - to skills (Photo: ShutterStock)

The criminals know how to appreciate skills

Through an analysis of the content on the websites, they found that there is not much difference between the languages: in those in the English language about 40% are women and in those in Russian it is 42.6% of them.

To confirm the data, they noted that in similar forums, on development and programming issues, only 12% of the participants were women - a figure that reliably represents the unequal reality in the field.

The researchers claim that we tend to excessively associate cyber criminals as men, but the analysis of the research data shows that the cyber criminal underground is more inclined to judge based on skills compared to the communities of professionals and specialists in cyber protection.

The developers in the world of online crime are valued for their skills and experience when it comes to running businesses on the dark web.

The second, and more serious, conclusion of the researchers: "If the IT world as a whole, and within it the world of information security and cyber protection, ignores qualified and talented security women, does not invest enough effort in recruiting them and then promoting them within the organizations, and discriminates against them solely on the basis of gender - to He should be surprised if they reach the playground of cyber threats and the protection against them, not necessarily in a positive sense."

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Revital Ohion, CEO of Trend Micro in Israel (Photo: Shai Hansav)

behind the research

Trend Micro

is a cyber company in Israel and around the world that aims to champion the issue of gender equality and the advancement of women.

The person at the head of Trend Micro in Israel is CEO Revital Ohion, who grew up in the company from its inception in Israel. Trend Micro Global is led by Japanese CEO Eva Chen, who is considered one of the most senior and close to the Japanese government.

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Tags

• hackers

• Darknet

• Cyber

• International Women's Day