Since bad actors are relentless in profiting from online exploits, leveraging cybersecurity diversity is crucial for defense against their attacks.

As such, the cybersecurity industry must broaden its lens to include individuals from various backgrounds, not just traditional software developers. By doing so, the industry can tap into a wider talent pool, bringing in those who are passionate and inquisitive, with skills that can be taught and honed, according to MK Palmore (pictured), director of the Office of the CISO at Google Cloud.

Google Cloud’s MK Palmore talks to theCUBE about the importance of cybersecurity diversity.

“We’ve been grappling with this workforce challenge in cybersecurity now for the better part of a decade plus,” Palmore said. “The position of organizations like Cyversity really is that we all need to, as an industry, open up our optic and lens to include people that come from various backgrounds that may not be your typical software developer, software engineer folks, but both have an interest, an inclination to dive into it, an ability to study and learn the material.”

Palmore spoke with theCUBE Research’s Savannah Peterson and John Furrier at the Black Hat USA event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed why cybersecurity diversity should be top of mind in the enterprise world. 

Reshaping cybersecurity diversity with artificial intelligence

As AI continues to take modern society by storm, it’s emerging to be a stepping stone toward cybersecurity diversity. For instance, AI augments cybersecurity practitioners’ capabilities in a way that puts them on a proactive edge since they are able to match and outdo the adversarial activity, according to Palmore. 

“I think that we’re seeing for the first time from a defender standpoint, an ability of cybersecurity defenders to be much more proactive through the use of AI tools than they have been historically,” he said. “AI has this possibility of turning the landscape into one where defenders, for the very first time, have an ability to lean into cybersecurity in a way that makes it substantive and responsive to the needs of the organization.”

Since cybersecurity is a skill-based industry, it’s one of the fields where a pedigree is not needed. This is because some of the traits required include curiosity and problem solving, with notable threat intelligence players, such as Google Cloud, coming in handy, Palmore pointed out. 

“Curious … it’s this idea that you want to dig down until you discover what the problem was and then you want to fix it,” he noted. “You want to institute controls, you want to make changes in the operational process of the organization so that the problem doesn’t happen again. People that are super inquisitive, people who want to understand how things work, and where problems like the source of problems emanate from tend to be good cybersecurity practitioners.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of the Black Hat USA event: 

Photo: SiliconANGLE