Fortinet and WiCyS Join Forces to Retain Women in Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity firm Fortinet participated in a drive to encourage and create career pathways for women employees in cybersecurity. In collaboration with the Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS), Fortinet aims to recruit, retain and advance women in the cybersecurity space.

WiCyS is a non-profit global community of women that helps bring women to foster their passion for cybersecurity. WIth this partnership, Fortinet aims to encourage women to apply for jobs in the cybersecurity space. These include ethical hacking, information security analyses, cloud architecture, network engineering, system administration, and several other opportunities available for candidates.

Fortinet participated in a recruitment program that offers direct employment to candidates through a 10-week program. The WiCyS Fortinet NSE 4 Certification Summer Camp offers self-paced coursework that includes webinars, access to the Fuse cohort, 1:1 interaction with Fortinet technical mentors, NSE4 exam voucher, scholarship and much more. Fortinet joined hands with WiCyS in 2020 and is now a tier one strategic partnership.

Influencer communications and SVP of marketing at Fortinet, Sandra Wheatley told SDxCentral, “There a lot of stereotypes that prevent young people coming into the industry, particularly women.”

Lynn Dohm, the Executive Director at WiCyS added that the challenge in retaining women in the industry is that they don’t feel they ‘belong. Dohm raised concern over the observation that women in technology drop out of their careers at the age of 35. Dohm told the news website, “We need the lifecycle of that recruitment, retention, and advancement to really make an impact on the workforce shortage.”

Wheatley emphasized the need for mentorship as a tool to build inclusiveness among women employees in cybersecurity. Adding that they are getting ready to identify and invest time into the community to make more women participate in the employment drive that not just employs but also creates a lifecycle to retain them.