women focused/only groups and people worth following

We were chatting about cybersecurity careers today and I mentioned there are women focused/only groups to look into. That merited an email and then I kept writing ;)

These are both well established orgs with many successful programs and happy members. Although they take donations / offer membership some programs are free. WCS and TDI are extremely inclusive orgs, but their mission is helping women / femmes:

• Women’s Cyberjutsu Society ( WCS ) https://womenscyberjutsu.org/?

• The Diana Initiative ( TDI ) https://www.dianainitiative.org/

Two femme people I recommend following to start:

• Lesley Carhart ( they ) : https://tisiphone.net/
• Katie Nickels ( she ) : https://www.sans.org/profiles/katie-nickels

If we let boys in 😺 then add Chris Sanders and John Strand.

• Chris Sanders ( he ) : https://chrissanders.org/
• John Strand ( he ) : https://www.blackhillsinfosec.com/team/john-strand/

All four of these folks are not only awesome teachers, but excellent humans besides. Generally, watching smart and compassionate people to find resources and more people is a good strategy. I recommend following these folks to start on infosec.exchange, a Mastodon server for cybersecurity folks. As you build your feeds, pay attention to how people behave. If they are jerks often or exhibit other unsocial behaviour don’t give them attention. There are kinder, better people you can learn from who will help. You don’t have to read / listen to the rest to learn.

More generally the community resources available to everyone include global orgs and local clubs ( dc404 forever ! ) and many are specific to specialty or team, like the Blue Team Village for defenders and OWASP for application security (just two examples of many). My current project IFIN is threat intelligence focused.

My advice: Start following some of my favourite humans (if you don’t already have some). Get into a healthy community to find support (including sympathy) and to get current answers to questions about job skills, course quality, and the most up to date memes. Find a mentor if you can, but stick close to the community orgs (literally, the charities and PBCs) and watch out for creeps, charlatans, and scams. There aren’t any shortcuts to learning, though everyone learns differently.

Of course, I’ll help however I can. Good hunting!

hth (“hope this helps”)(i used to work in cybersecurity)