An organisation in the United Kingdom is being attacked on average 854 times per week in the last 6 months, that makes it a prominent business risk, not just an IT issue. When you pair that with the impact just one breach can have, from mass amounts of personal data lost to large-scale disruption to our essential services, you begin to paint a picture of just how crucial defending against cybercriminals is.
Currently, the industry is struggling to keep up with the quantity of attacks as a result of insufficient talent to help support businesses and drive innovation. This is why Dr. Dorit Dor, Chief Technology Officer at cybersecurity company Check Point Software is spreading the word about why it’s essential to engage young women about how exciting a career in STEM can be, offering advice from someone who has climbed the ladder herself.
hello everyone thank you for tuning in again I am Kaye Batman the content director at Chan code and today we’re
discussing the cyber security industry is cracking without enough women an organization in the UK has been attacked
on average 854 times per week in the last six months which makes it a
prominent business risk not just an IT issue currently the industry is struggling to keep up with the number of
attacks as a result of insufficient talent to help support businesses and dve Innovation thankfully I’ve got the
one for Dr dorit D Chief technology officer at cyber security company
checkpoint software with me today who is spreading the word the word about why it is essential to engage young women on
careers in stem and offering her advice as someone who has climbed the ladder herself welcome to re thank you so much
for joining us thank you very much for inviting me I’m excited to be here today
good good thank you we’d love to kick off with a little bit of background about yourself if that’s okay case yes
sure so um my career uh started uh in in Israel you you start by going to the
Army After High School but before that I studied the computers math and computer
science in the University from that I I went to uh some of the army units to
work in my profession this is an option you have when you do this so I had eight years of experience of doing that and
then H exactly when I left that I joined checkpoint It was 95 many years ago it was 28 years ago
and uh since then I’m a checkpoint on the way uh I had two kids all the family
are cyber Geeks me my husband and the two kids that are grown up by now and
I’ve done PhD in computer science as well amazing so you have um quite a
traditional background into into maths and computer science and you took stem subjects and was there something about
that I mean was there something about that at school or or your family before you I mean you’ve encouraged a new
generation of cyber Geeks as you said was it was it something about your family or your teachers that encouraged
so actually actually I I think that everybody let me uh decide for myself uh
there was nobody pushing me one way or another my father uh was doing statistics but my mother was an
architect is an architect and an artist so that’s could say a very neutral fe uh
feedback for doing what I did yeah but at early on uh I I noticed that I like
to solve riddles and I liked math uh over time I learned a bit computers it
was very geeky back then because H computers were with punch cards so I had
my first program written with Punch Cards and I I felt it’s about it’s it’s
rather exciting but I actually didn’t know what I want to do I didn’t have a fixed opinion um and before going to the
army people in Israel choose their Direction and many people in my class
went to study in the University so I said you know I’ll open a like a directory to see what what could I learn
in the University that could be interesting for me so I flipped out the pages it was a paper book um on what you
could study in the university and I I reached a page where it said math and computer science and all of a sudden I
had this Epiphany like AA moment that somebody took everything I always wanted to learn together and put it in one page
at that moment it was clear to me that that’s what I want to go and study and then later uh I got occupied
with mass and computer science and somehow uh directed into cyber with my
Army background and then continuing a checkpoint I think it fits me a lot
because I like the topics we could discuss why but but it was kind of a very clear to me in
person that that’s what I needed to do and there was no like external need for
push or examples or other reasons to do this yeah oh yeah because I wanted to
ask you a little bit about how you ended up in cyber security you mentioned there your army background is is that kind of
what pushed you off in that direction and did you see there was this kind of a need there for for more people and that
that was going to be a good career choice yeah so first I didn’t I didn’t
focus on the career choices based on what would be career choice I must say I chose my careers based on what was
interesting at the moment um maybe it’s not very longlook but obviously I did
find myself in a longlook job so I don’t know uh the second is that uh yeah I I
got into cyber through the Army but also many people that left the me move to other topics and I think that cyber has a
combination of uh a challenging subject with deep technology where I could
exercise my my expertise and there is an adversary and adversary always push you
hard you always have to win versus the adversary and me liking to solve riddles
and being like a um a person that likes to uh um to win on the hard problems uh
was uh exciting for me to join specifically this space but I must say I didn’t think about it at the time um as
such a whether it’s important to my career or not Plus in 95 the the career for cyber
was it in very very early stages so you didn’t even call it cyber back then when I started the checkpoint oh okay that’s
interesting I also interested to know as well you said said you got two children and um they’re also cyber Geeks they
girls or boys they are boys yeah they’re boys oh I was going to say another
generation of females but they are boys how are they found that studying as as
well I mean it’s much easier when you have parents that are encouraging you is that kind of yeah but but we we didn’t
we didn’t do this by encouragement we I think we Tred to be neutral like my parents tried to be neutral with me we
gave them a lot of opportunities to study what they wanted they could uh
they could get interest in many topics and this was intriguing to them they actually started in early age learning
things over the Internet so it wasn’t us pushing data to them it wasn’t at school
it was a self kind of drive and um maybe they are similar like in in in type or
in personality that uh drove them to the same same topics but uh it wasn’t like
we said that’s the right choice for them hence they should go do that so it
wasn’t their choice to choose it yeah and and they must have seen um something
about the industry that really um spark their interest um which is what I wanted to ask you about a a career in cyber
what what makes a career in cyber so exciting yeah so I think we should talk
about the person the company the country you know the universe we should talk
about it in many aspects but let’s start from the persons I want to start by saying why
it’s good for women to study stem I think that there are a lot of roles
related to Stem that are very prestigious that are very intellectual
steaming that are very flexible in hours of work that are very rewarding in
compensation so it’s kind of like dream work I would say yeah there is a lot of
jobs uh they pay well uh you could do many many things you could do an you
could be an individual contributor you could be a techie you could be a product manager working more with clients you
could be a UI person you could be a kernel person you could be a mobile
developer you could developer application in tandem with other people you could develop it alone in front of
the computer so you have really all the opportunities in the world and so that’s
in general computers and stem I think that cyber takes it to the extreme even
more rewarding flexibility it’s it’s a it’s a doing
good it’s a job that does good to the world you end up helping clients protect
themselves I cannot tell you how many times customer told us and told me a checkpoint that I saved them that I
saved their career that I save their data that I extremely helped them in a in a situation where they were
stressful um so it’s it’s a job that does well to the world for yourself it
rewards you um and it takes to extreme like uh many many workplaces a nice
compensation um a lot of choice in spaces and what to do so I think it’s
like stem Plus plus yes and I have to actually mention the the impacts the real world impact
that it has and that the the feedback that you have had from people as well that you you you save them and you save
them from um you know really tricky situations and just hearing that impact
I think sometimes young people don’t quite realize um what tech is and that
Tech soles real world problems and with cyber that’s that’s um slightly easier to see isn’t it it’s easier to see how
you can help people um and protect people’s businesses um and and protect
their data or whatever it may be and whereas sometimes young people struggle
a little bit with what a career in stem might look like and who I might be helping and they sometimes just think
it’s is going to be Technical and I’m just going to work on my own and I’m not actually gonna have you know much of a
team and I’m not going to make much of an impact um and you mentioned some brilliant career choices that CU I
wanted to ask you about the um different um potential careers that people can have in cyber and it’s not just always
you know just thinking um you’re just stopping attackers or whatever it may be you mentioned so many career career
choices there and jobs I mean you mentioned um product managers and UI and ux and developers and they’re not always
things that people think of in cyber are they yeah so I want to say when you do
cyber security you have a core that is very focused maybe on the attack vector
and how to actually really defend it and you have a lot of product elements around it that are critical to the
delivery of this security because if the security is complex to implement or complex to use or complex to understand
it will not be usable so these are not like side parts that are not interesting
these are core parts that makes the difference between an excellent product and a less excellent product so there is
a core team if you if you really like the kind of adversary attack scenario
you could sit down you could learn about attacks you could you could be creative on how to defend against them you could
bring out engines but if it’s this is not your choice you could deal with
everything else you could deal with networking on the low level you could deal with management you could deal with
Cloud you could deal with mobile you could deal with the user experience these are product delivered to real
customers some times the customer is even a consumer or an end user behind your product so it has to be very
self-explanatory and very interactive you could talk to your clients and interact with them and find
out what works for them you could do kind of a whiteboard session or stand behind them uh like a shadowing and
learn how how good or simple is it what you define because the exact scenario of
usage you have to be the expert on the exact scenario of usage to tune it well
for the scenarios that others will understand so you could do all of that from the eyes of a developer but you
could all do all of that from the eyes of a product manager that Define the product and doesn’t code or you could do
all of that from the eyes of a support Personnel that help the co the product or customer success that make the
product deployed or even business selling it marketing it there are many
many professions around cyber some of them are closer to the
core of the cyers some of them are development or product and some are even
in the outskirts and there is no one siiz fits all you could do your work on
in front of the computer and kind of achieve small tasks that you do by yourself you could work in large teams
you could be a project manager of a large project or a large system you could be a system architect that have
all the elements under your watch and you kind of the integrator of all of them or you could be very focused on a
very expert Point part where your detailed expertise are needed to solve a
very detailed and hard problem so these are very very different kind of day jobs
for the same definition of hey I’m in the Cyber yes exactly I love the fact you
thre in the word creative as well there I love it when people throw that in on the podcast there’s so many people
when they think of tech they don’t think of the word creative and that’s it’s insane that you think those in Tech
realize how creative you can be in your job and as you said there are so many different aspects to um cyber that that
you don’t have to be that Technical and I wanted to ask you a little bit about soft skills um and and how useful they
are for a career in cyber or if you have to be highly Technical and you kind of answered it there that you know all of
the different things you need to do that you are not working siloed on your own
as you said there you have to be able to communicate clearly you have to turn something quite complex into something
quite simple and communicate across a range of teams I don’t think that’s
something that people instantly think of when working inide and even take one aspect of it let’s assume you are
working in a team but the team may be uh cross countries maybe part of your team
is in Israel and part of your team team is in the UK and part of your team is in the US this is not an unlikely scenario
so just explaining to all these teams what you had in mind what’s your plan
versus what their plan what you need from them or they have a problem right now that they can deliver what do you
want so how you compromise with them how they enable you to progress without kind of stucking
you um by understanding what’s their what is what are their needs and how you
could kind of move forward with it so there are many soft skill that just come
from the type of organization you work in and an example a few years back I
realized that there were two teams that were really not working well together and after I analyzed it I saw that the
two teams are really upset one on the other and it turned out that they didn’t notice that there was a a time
difference of one hour because the the the daylight saving time change in a different schedule between them so they
would send an invite for a certain time thinking that’s a certain time for the other side and and the other side didn’t
show up and it was like a big deal in their opinion that they weren’t respected that the other side did not
bother to show up and then that created a whole misunderstanding about you know teamwork
but so things could be proactive and how to communicate a plan and how to make
people work for the same Mission but things could be also reactive on how to
understand miscommunications and how to deal with global organizations even if
you don’t work in a global teams your sales may be in another country your customer may be in another country their
form their culture their dialogue is different than the way you conduct the business there are many soft skills uh
that that are embedded I think this is true in any job this is certainly true in all the high-tech industry
and this is certainly true uh in the Cyber industry as well that’s actually one of the things I find exciting about
being in this area H in this era of high-tech industry
globalization I think that what makes our jobs exciting yes yes I agree and
something as simple as that as been able to communicate between teams about you know teens in different countries and
daylight savings um is just one of those soft skills that you pick up once you’ve been in work a little while as well just
being more mindful of working with different teams in different countries and it has nothing to do with whether or
not you came out of University with a great computer science degree that’s just one of those soft skills that you
pick up uh along the way um I couldn’t agree more um I wanted to ask you a little bit about what more can companies
do uh to attract women and girls into the industry do you
think so I think there are like few stages of problems there is the entry
pipeline the entry pipeline is simply not big enough there are not enough women that
choose uh cyber at the at the at the learning phase or the choice to enter to
their career they are not even looking at such things now after they are
accepted there is a problem of drop so some women would drop from this and we
could discuss why would they drop and then there is a problem of progress
uh you could stay in your job you could stay an excellent software developer and
not progress but in progressing to a technological jobs or to leadership jobs
we also get a reduction in women so I want to speak about the entry about
staying and about the promotions so each of them is a separate part of the
problem on the first part I think that the influence is mainly starting at a
younger age we should have uh like a brand that it’s a good place to work in
and that women are welcome and that it’s a good career for women but the
selection to choose stem and to choose cyber Etc is a lot outside of the
company’s handlers um and the pipe should Simply Be bigger and that’s a lot on the Early
Education at school by families by different programs that would direct
them to even try I mean companies could volunteer to enhance it for example
checkpoint and I’m personally was on the board of an organization called she codes that is targeted at uh um
encouraging women to code there are other organizations like Queen be and
other organization in Israel that are encouraging uh women to go to technology
to development to high-tech Etc we could help that but there is a
responsibility that is wider than the companies then we need to encourage them to enter the language to be accepted to
a company should be gender neutral the process should be gender neutral if
possible involvement in the process of other women showing uh the desire to
have women on board I think we’ve improved a lot in doing this and at the
end let’s say we got a woman into the workforce okay we are already in
disadvantage because not enough women applied and not enough women were accepted but let’s assume we have them
inside now the goal is to keep them I think sometimes women will drop off you
to family constraints and I think we should help women see that there are alternatives and that they would not be
better off doing something else Etc so uh we should understand that some some
of them has difficulty or some of them feel maybe alienated by team members
that are men or something like this we have um a mentoring program internally
including Juniors to help them see and develop and answer questions in their career but there could be other ways
just even creating a networking between the women in the workplace Etc showing them that they are welcome and helping
them you know not giving up when they think to give up convincing them to stay convincing them to take more chances Etc
this would all decrease the drop so let’s assume you have somebody and they
are in and they’ve not dropped still you have to promote them as part of the
regular promotion there the women have the disadvantage that the men often
think for themselves to be a CEO even they are unqualified and women would
usually de qualified what they are qualified to do so they would come
underestimating themselves so we need to balance the process we need to welcome into the process Equalization that helps
the women show her skills even if she doesn’t come and say oh I’m the best at
everything I could be anything you want we could still extract her qualities and understand
that she is better than the men and we could help her find her route technology
route managing route uh project management or product management or
other routes and help her get promoted in the in the workforces so I think we
have many stages where the industry has a lot of influence the woman too by the way but the industry has a lot of
influence but the initial pipeline has to come from a bigger education and
marketing for a young generation that that’s kind of a good direction for them to choose yes I agree and and and you’re
absolutely right to break that into three as well that there are problems uh uh throughout all stages to to get women
in girls in and then um to to retain them along the way and promoting them um
as well it’s interesting you you um talk about the the pipeline um and making the pipeline bigger um I’ve heard a few
times about cultural differences and how it’s so different in in different countries I had a lady on here recently
from India and she said there wasn’t an issue in you know everybody just studied
stem or girls studied stem in India it just wasn’t a big problem and um in the
UK when she got here she said there is a problem in the UK and how strange that
was to to see because she hadn’t grown up with that what was your experience like in in Israel was there a a were you
the only female what what was your experience as so as I said I’m a I’m a dinosaur so I started my high school
study before uh computers were there and during my high school I
programmed uh in in a punch card in computers so this was a complete outlier
to the industry at that time um so I would say that in high school there wasn’t even a track of computers it was
more math and physics but in my class at school uh there were uh 20 kids 18 were
men and two were women and we studied math and physics so I think it’s telling even before computer people like women
didn’t choose stem actually in the University when I came to the university
and again it it wasn’t that popular just computer science back then we had a
quite equal H population of women and men studying math and computer science
uh there wasn’t as much of a gap as there is today actually the world deteriorated since then
I think one of the reasons is that H today many H kids have computers at home
and the boys uh are spending more time in average in front of their computer at
Young uh age so they are perceived maybe to have an advantage so maybe women are
choosing other track I don’t know for sure that this is a good theory but I when I went to the university there was
actually much closer to U equal than it is to today and still when we finished
high school me when we finished the university not as many women went to
work in computer science and they spread along many topics so I think all in all I would say
there was a problem and there is a problem and uh today uh um we are
fighting you know to to get above 20 some per of women in stem that’s that’s
the situation in Israel as well that’s kind of the world average there are countries in which this is better uh but
uh but it’s definitely in most countries it’s at the 20 something percent uh and
it’s definitely not enough so it wasn’t an issue for me in person but it was an
issue kind of across the board so yeah I was lucky I was lucky to have this aha
moment and to decide that this is what I want to do but apparently this was not the case with many other women around
yeah and I think some of that as well is down to um what you see about the tech industry and um especially what you see
about the Cyber industry because I wanted to talk a little bit about stereotypes and the Cyber industry and
how can we break some of the stereotypes that we see in cyber um and uh in Tech
uh on a whole I think that stereotype when you think of hackers it’s always
always a Mal hacker with the hood you always see that and they are always sitting in the
basement with Coke and pizza that’s also that not like but that’s not the case in
the real world you know there are women hackers there are women
sissors ER and they are uh not necessarily sitting with hoodies and
certainly not necessarily eating pizza and drinking Coke um and but I I’m I’m a
I’m a I’m a good techie I’m not that good marketeer so frankly I don’t know how to change this Market perception
it’s such a stupid perception really yeah if this is the reason why we can’t get women into cyber this is a real
stupid reason yeah and I think just more people like yourselves just sharing your story and just just letting more people
know this is just not what the real world is like as you said just more and more people um sharing that and sharing
what their day-to-day is like um is so helpful to Breaking that stereotype but you’re all right when you when when you
do see that uh those images of hackers they they always tend to be um male but
um as you said throughout this um uh about supporting women uh uh in in the
Cyber industry what has been your own experience do you think the Cyber industry is supportive of of women and
diversity is that something that you have experienced and more people should know about so first I think cyber
industry is very supportive about uh about diversity this include uh not not
just women and men like other uh other populations uh with problems of
diversity um and I want to say that the Cyber industry is missing so many
people that if you just stand up you know and raise your voice you’d be called by somebody so I can’t see how
the Cyber industry could afford not to be supportive of women we we are 50% of
the population it’s true that large percentage is is eliminated by not even going to study the right profession but
I see so many open jobs and such a need for excellent people that I don’t think we should be
worried about this so I for some reason for example many women go into Life
Sciences or chemistry or other professions I think there are much less jobs in chemistry or biology and they
are much less lucrative so maybe traditionally there were there
were more women there but but an industry that is lacking so many talents
must be striving to to increase the women percentage also know for sure that it’s it’s a talk in
the industry uh that there are um HR organization including our own HR that
is busy and measuring this and uh trying to make sure that we are taking a a
positive stand and that we are helping um making sure that if we have
the right women we would hire her and that we will promote her so I’m I’m
quite sure that this is this is a very supportive situation yeah and I think that’s
something that more people should know perhaps they don’t they again with that stereotype they think that they’re not
going to be supported um if they did go in um to to the industry and something that a barrier that we need to keep
breaking down and we are almost out of time and I wanted to ask you uh one last question do you have any final words of
wisdom for anyone looking to get into the industry is there anything that you wish someone had told you
so as I said I I feel lucky because I didn’t I didn’t
ER I didn’t have these questions in mind I I found it easy because I didn’t have
uh the like uh I was not busy
um thinking about it all the time um so I I don’t have advice for myself uh I do
have advice for women um um one is an
advice to stop overthinking it if I’ll take one advice I think if we look at
the world today maybe in the world of our parents and and I I it’s funny I’m
saying it because I’ve been a checkpoint 28 years but in the world of our parents people would keep their job for many
years in the current world people move jobs every few years so try it you know
you don’t like it move elsewhere what do you have to lose you gain good profession you gain good
experience you are now a um able to uh
to uh decide for yourself what you want to do you have better understanding I want
to program in this I don’t want to program I want that then move on it it
won’t even seem strange it won’t even seem like you are jumpy or something because that’s the norm in the industry
so hey I’m telling you this is a very prestiged job it has very nice compensation it have very good
opportunities of growth but if you tried and didn’t like you know be there two years and move on try something else so
that’s one advice I think sometimes women overthink it and what would happen if and don’t give it a chance and I
think some of the women that don’t give it a chance would fall in love with it second part uh that I also uh think
uh is that don’t limit yourself the sky is the limit if you are good at that and
if that’s your passion don’t don’t leave your passion because your girlfriends
are not going that direction that your girlfriends are talking on another Topic at Friday evening you’d find yourself on
how to talk this topic and make it interesting for them as well but don’t be scared for the wrong
reasons and and really if you choose something you love and you you are good
at there is no better you know job on Earth for you so it doesn’t matter by
the way if it’s cyber or something else if you like art go for art in the same way but if you’re really passionate
about something and you really enjoy technology and you enjoy kind of this uh
deep Tech and stuff go go do this it’s you could you could be excellent in this
and this would be excellent choice for you yeah that is great advice I think you are absolutely right uh especially
as women we tend to overthink everything and then the moment has gone we’ve almost talked ourselves out of why we shouldn’t try something um and you are
right I think there are lots of people that would just think I gave it a go I really do love a career in Tech or a
career in cyber um and I’m so so pleased that I I gave it a chance or like you said it doesn’t matter either and you
can move take all those wonderful skills that you learn all those soft skills that you learn and take them take them
where what does it matter yeah you could try five different topics you could try
in in in in a in a short lifetime before you decide to settle on something what
you want to do yeah yeah that is lovely advice to end it on because we are already out of time so thank you so much
for joining me today um it’s been a pleasure having you on to to share your Insight so thank you so so much thank
you very much for inviting me it was pleasure to talk to you and I look forward to see all these women in uh the
workplaces yes yes so do we um and thank you so much to everybody listening as always thank you for joining us and we
hope to see you again next time
