TryHackMe races to add women to Christmas cyber challenge roster after backlash

Cybersecurity training provider TryHackMe is scrambling to recruit women infosec pros to help with its Christmas challenge following backlash concerning a lack of gender diversity.

In announcing its annual Advent of Cyber event, which offers 24 days of free beginner-level cyber training tasks throughout December, TryHackMe confirmed an 18-strong list of industry professionals and influencers enlisted to offer assistance to students completing the challenges.

None of these 18 figures were women, however, and the company said it is now working with Eva Benn, principal security program manager at Microsoft Security and Response Center, to recruit women to Advent of Cyber’s (AoC) helper list before it kicks off next week. Benn is now one of the event’s registered helpers, with others being finalized today.

The training provider told The Register that the omission of women’s representation was not intentional, and not through a lack of trying.

“We in fact reached out to several female creators to participate in this year’s AoC, some of them declined due to prior commitments, and others did not respond despite follow-up emails,” the spokesperson said. “We recognise we should have communicated this context better.”

Confirming this, ethical hacker and university advisor Katie Paxton-Fear responded to a post highlighting the lack of representation, saying she was among the women TryHackMe contacted, but couldn’t make it.

“Representation is important to us, and based on the feedback, we are actively expanding the helper lineup,” TryHackMe added. “We are currently onboarding a group of female creators in collaboration with Eva, and we are preparing to release this updated lineup for this year’s Advent of Cyber.”

The training company also went on to say that its situation reflects the number of women making cybersecurity content online (all helpers have sizable online followings), which pales in comparison to men. Only two of the top 100 channels publishing cybersecurity content globally are run by women, it claimed.

Caitlin Sarian, one of the biggest cybersecurity influencers with a combined following of more than 2 million, branded TryHackMe’s diversity gaffe “insanity.”

Lesley Carhart, infosec veteran and director of incident response at Dragos, took to social media to claim influencer culture is exacerbating the industry’s deep-seated issues.

“Cybersecurity isn’t ready for the conversation about how bad sexism and ageism are in the whole pen test/red team community, or how influencer culture and the saturated market are enabling it to get worse,” she said.

Digital rights and cybersecurity education professional Michelle L told The Register that the news was “unsurprising” and criticized the men who agreed to partner with TryHackMe’s event for not holding the company to account.

“This is unsurprising and sadly shows how normalized it is in tech to erase the work of and isolate women,” she said. “Every single one of these men could and should have asked ‘who else is involved’ and refused to be included if it wasn’t balanced.

“But as ever: Ego is the biggest vulnerability in cyber and tech. All this mess and for what? A little picture and a name drop in a publication no one cares about! Everyone fighting for crumbs from a table that they should be flipping over.

“It is why I and others have moved away from tech and cyber events, and even careers. Because we aren’t safe, welcome, or paid fairly. I don’t care about this calendar but I do care about the many femme-identifying and nonbinary folk that are harmed by the culture it represents.” ®

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