Today’s female cybersecurity leaders are paving the way for those now entering the profession. We asked members of the Cybersecurity Collaboration Forum’s Women in Cyber group where things stand for women in the industry, and what the next generation needs to know. 

Said the chief business information security officer at Salesforce: "I really want to be able to help minority voices be heard. I want to champion other women because I feel I have seen quite possibly everything that you can see.”

Said the CISO and VP of Trust at Reddit: "The internet felt like a space to explore. I wanted to protect and defend that. It felt like you needed to have a contingency plan for when things might go wrong.”

Said Abnormal's director of product and design: “Everyone here should be the CEO of the product that they are responsible for,” Jiang said. “They should be the visionary for how we choose to innovate our solutions that will bring maximum value

Said the children's book author and Best Buy's cloud security engineer: "I also felt it was important to take on the Hollywood myth that cybersecurity people are people in hoodies working in a dark basement.”

Said the founder of Sphere: "“We learned very early on that you have to play ball with market-leading products; you have to make sure that you can add value to those technologies while solving a unique problem yourself.”

Said USC recruiter Rachel Harpley: "While I cannot fix the entire industry and often feel like an umbrella in a hurricane, it is interactions with driven and curious job seekers that remind me of how meaningful it can be to share shelter in a storm."

Said UnitedHealth Group's chief privacy officer: Synergy between privacy and security leaders on a regular basis is critical “because it's truly important that we’re not operating in silos.”

Said Mandiant's senior vice president of strategy and alliances: "I recognize that at critical points in my life people leant me a hand, and I want to do that for others."

Said the chief security officer of Citizen Bank: “Being in the law enforcement and intelligence communities years ago has provided me with a very strong baseline into what we’re seeing the financial industry now.”