When Tammy Moskites was starting her career in IT, she was told she couldn’t have the job she wanted.
Having just landed a job as a senior trend analyst at a health insurance company in the United States, Moskites created the company’s first computer network.
“After I had created the network I decided the company needed a network administrator, and I told my boss that I should have the job,” she told Women’s Agenda.
“Later, he told me he had given the job to someone else – a man – and when I asked why, he said ‘well we didn’t want you wearing skirts and climbing underneath desks’.”
Moskites is now one of the leading women in one of the United States’ most heavily male-dominated industries – cybersecurity.
Moskites has built a 30-year career in IT by helping companies and government agencies defend themselves against cyber-attacks.
“I started from right at the bottom of the tech ladder and worked my way up, and now I am able to build security networks from scratch for some of the biggest companies in the world,” she said.
In February of this year, Moskites decided to leave the corporate sector to join a startup called Venafi as its Chief Information Security Officer.
The company provides security software to companies across the globe, both in the public and private sectors.
Companies in all sectors have become increasingly nervous about cyber-attacks since National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden stole huge amounts of encrypted information from the United States government – making Moskites’ job more important than ever.
Moskites herself attended a talk where Snowden explained when encryption works to protect information from hackers like himself – and when it doesn’t.
Only 25% of the Australian information and technology industry are women. The gender makeup of the United States’ IT industry is roughly the same.
In cybersecurity specifically, this figure is less than 10%, according to Moskites.
“As a woman in this industry, I feel I’ve had to work harder to prove myself at times and go above and beyond when others didn’t,” she said.
Moskites said she is confident the number of women in tech industries is growing, with more women in senior positions both in IT and in cybersecurity.
“The tide is definitely changing for women in this industry.”