Episode 207: Sarah Tatsis of BlackBerry on finding and Keeping Women in Cyber

In this week’s episode of the podcast (#207) we speak with Sarah Tatsis of the firm BlackBerry about her 20-year career at the legendary mobile device maker and the myriad challenges attracting women to- and keeping them in the information security field. Women face many challenges in the workplace and that’s especially true in information security, where women make up less than a quarter of information security professionals. So what does it take to create a workplace that fosters and encourage women? Podcast Episode 137 Sponsored by Code42: GirlScouts to the Rescue and Rethinking Enterprise DLP We continue our observance of women’s history month by speaking with Sarah Tatsis, who is the Senior Vice President of the Advanced Technology Development Labs at BlackBerry. Sarah is a 20 year veteran of BlackBerry and has held a number of positions within the organization. Today, Sarah and her team of engineers are responsible for taking new technologies from ideation, to incubation, to delivery into BlackBerry products and for helping BlackBerry stay on the cutting edge of security innovation.  Sarah Tatsis, who is the Senior Vice President of the Advanced Technology Development Labs at BlackBerry. Sarah is also the President of Soroptimist International of Kitchener-Waterloo, a volunteer organization that provides women and girls with access to education and training they need to achieve economic empowerment. Episode 205 – Google’s Camille Stewart: InfoSec’s Lack of Diversity is a Cyber Risk In this conversation, Sarah and I talk about her path to the information security field and how companies can work to both recruit and keep women on board. We discuss the work Sarah and BlackBerry have done with Canada’s Girl Guides (the equivalent of the Girl Scouts in the U.S.) to foster awareness of cybersecurity as a field and discipline. We also talk about the unique challenges that women face in our increasingly technology enabled society and workplaces where threats like deep fake videos, cyber stalking and surveillance disproportionately affect women.  As always,  you can check our full conversation in our latest Security Ledger podcast at Blubrry. You can also listen to it on iTunes and check us out on SoundCloud, Stitcher, Radio Public and more. Also: if you enjoy this podcast, consider signing up to receive it in your email.