Good news for Women who seek Cybersecurity careers!

learned about navigating a field dominated by men, in order to help other women empower themselves and pursue successful cybersecurity careers.”  The July 16, 2025 article entitled “Women Who 'Hacked the Status Quo' Aim to Inspire Cybersecurity Careers” (https://www.darkreading.com/cybersecurity-operations/women-hacked-status-quo-cybersecurity-careers) included these comments:

Cisco security research engineering technical leader Chi-en (Ashley) Shen knew at the age of 17 that she was interested in cybersecurity as a career after reading a book on hacking. At the time, it was an unusual choice for a woman, as the field was predominately populated by men.

"I dove into online war games, practiced Web exploitation, and spent evenings on a Taiwanese hacking forum," she tells Dark Reading. "When I entered university, I became active in the HITCON security community, attending every conference, often volunteering behind the scenes, and absorbing talks on various topics."

Shen became a cybersecurity professional in graduate school when a colleague asked her to join his startup. During her career so far, in which she worked for Mandiant and Google's Threat Analysis Group before joining Cisco, Shen has remained unique among her colleagues in that she's been the only woman on every one of her teams.

Indeed, despite some gains, women in the cybersecurity field still seem to be exceptions rather than the rule. However, there are signs that the gender gap is narrowing, with the emergence of new resources and opportunities to help women thrive in cybersecurity, Shen says.

To help promote this shift, she and some of her fellow female cybersecurity professionals will be sharing their experiences and advice with other women who seek to follow the same path at the Black Hat USA 2025 conference, which will be held in Las Vegas in August. The panel, "Hacking the Status Quo: Tales From Leading Women in Cybersecurity," is a follow-up to one that occurred at Black Hat Asia, and is on the roster again because of the success of its first incarnation, Vandana Verma, Black Hat USA review board member and panel moderator, tells Dark Reading. Natalie Silvanovich, team lead and security engineer for Google Project Zero, and security researcher Maddie Stone will join Shen as panelists.

Great news for women in Cybersecurity!