Interview with Dr. Wade Holmes, member, Cyversity Board of Directors
Cyversity is a 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to achieve the consistent representations of women, underrepresented minorities, and all veterans in the cybersecurity industry through programs designed to diversify, educate, and empower.
Executive Summary:
Dan Anderson vCISO and Roving On-Call reporter had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Wade Holmes, member, Cyversity Board of Directors just prior to the CyberCatalysts: Empowering the Next Generation of Cyber Leaders talk held during RSAC.
We’ve been complaining in Cyber Security that there are not enough people to hire and also that we lack diversity. Cyversity is answering both of those complaints and challenges in a very timely way. This message is for all Cyber Leaders especially, and for leaders generally, of all Companies, a call to action. Strap in, prepare for takeoff!
Live Interview:
Dan: What is the primary objective that Cyversity is trying to achieve?
Dr. Holmes: To be able to have a career path that provides a huge number of opportunities for underprivileged and underrepresented communities who typically don’t realize that a career path in Cybersecurity exists for them. So, it is twofold as far as my passion and in driving Cyversity, the mission of Cyversity is to be able to help create that pipeline of fully empowered, enabled, diverse security practitioners and leaders.
Dan: OK great. How long has Cyversity been around?
Dr. Holmes: Cyversity has been around for 10 years now.
Dan: In some of your prior roles did you get the opportunity to be a hands-on teacher or a mentor?
Dr. Holmes: Yes, absolutely. I’m based in Austin and participate in the UT stem (https://stemmuse.com/) programs at UT Austin where actually I had a young lady that I was mentoring just last year that was working on her doctoral degree.
Dan: So, a person could really come in at any point and then Cyversity can work with them to help lift them up and there’s a lot of different paths. I always love to ask about backgrounds because everyone has a different way/story of how they got in to Cyber Security and we hear some very backwards ways, my own way pretty backwards I think, a story for another time.
I really like what you’re doing, so, how do you get it out there? How do you starting from Boston, or Texas where you are, how do you get it in all the states and all the countries what’s the plan for growth?
Dr. Holmes: Cyversity strives to be a global organization, and while all our chapters are in the US today, we are assessing global expansion. We have 12 chapters in major metro areas today. so as far as being a board member I’m driving this strategy globally where I’m interfacing with local chapters and local chapters are spinning up community efforts within those chapters to drive regional outreach.
Membership drives specific events and such that are local, while then tying back to the main resource in that we are providing globally for this partnership with other organizations such as we have major partnerships with Sans, ISC^2, and Cyber SN, to be able to have placement with job networks.
Dan: You mentioned a couple of professional associations and those are the ones that have the various certifications that people go after. Are there ways to use those certifications to qualify and then in Cyversity can you use those certifications that you earn along the way?
Dr. Holmes: Absolutely, yes! If you’re coming, a level that you may be looking at CompTIA security plus as the starting point is going to be for mid-level may look at CISSP senior and such there’s a whole educational training curriculum path based on where you are whether you are junior level, mid-level, or senior that we can recommend and that maps out with different recommended career paths and training.
Dan: That makes sense, so appreciate that so do you envision having your own certifications.
Dr. Holmes: Yes, that’s an interesting discussion. It’s something that is not imminent, but it is something that might emerge, so I would say stay tuned it could be a next stage at or least start to expand and growth. I think for the for the immediate in the short term more focused on partnering with other organizations in the minimum long term that is something that we are certainly heavily focused on.
Dan: Do you have the concept of putting a mentee with a mentor for one-on-one mentoring?
Dr. Holmes: Absolutely connecting those together is top of mind.
Dan: I’ve mentored a fair number of people in cyber security, and I started doing it probably about 10 years ago. I find it obviously satisfying but I never really did it formally through an organization, so I love that you’ve got a mechanism to help identify someone that wants in to Cyber Security and somebody with skills and experience who want to give time of their time and talents.
Dr. Holmes: Like most things in life about communication and connection and connecting people and we’re trying to be a clearinghouse to make it easier. Especially a community that typically may not have those resources in their family or they may not know other cyber security professionals to reach out to, so they find that this is where they connect and help build those connections to build that extended family that can give them guidance, whether it’s formal mentorship or whether it’s through training resources.
Dan: One of the biggest challenges as you know you see it all the time just getting people into cyber security is hard and a lot of people want to get in and maybe if they have an IT background, they have a little advantage or whatever but there’s a lot of pathways in cybersecurity and so we don’t just need technical people.
Dr. Holmes: We need the governance roles and many areas, but we try to make clear everyone isn’t going to be the black hoody hacker personality.
Dan: This is a good discussion. Do you have the concept of corporate partnerships you mentioned where you provide job placement? How do you go about doing this now?
Dr. Holmes: Yes, my other hat I wear, I work for Google and Google cloud is one of the major corporate sponsors of Cyversity and we have several other large organizations that sponsor. We tried to create reciprocal relationships where we’re able to gain some level of sponsorship organizations and we’re able to create a pipeline of qualified individuals that they can interview and hopefully be able to find some great talent.
Dan: It sounds like Cyversity is something you can join and become a member, and you pay dues as an individual, or corporate sponsors could pay and sponsor as well?
Dr. Holmes: There are certainly different views that resonate differently for everyone. From structure it provides to help guide a career path, to events and community building for individual membership, and then from a corporate perspective it is through corporate sponsorships and becoming a partner in various ways.
Dan: How much is a single membership for an individual? How much for Corporate? What do sponsorships look like?
Dr. Holmes: Membership for individuals yearly dues are as follows:
- Student member $20
- Professional member $100
- Veteran member $20
Corporate sponsorships from $10k to $150k, which have varying levels with tiered pricing to accommodate companies’ size and objectives.
Dan: With Corporate sponsorships there’s different pricing and then do you do you have some sort of go to market partners that you mentioned, some of the professional organizations like either ISACA or ISC^2 do you do you try to partner up with them?
Dr. Holmes: We are doubling down on partnerships. This year we’re going to be much more active in partnering with other synergistic organizations to help provide members of our and other aligned organizations even more resources. So, yes leveraging the power of partnership to reach out to an even broader audience will be part of our focus going forward.
Dan: What does the future horizon look like for you? What do you want to accomplish?
Dr. Holmes: The horizon looks like it’s trying to become the predominant organization to develop and activate a pipeline of empowered cybersecurity professionals, and allow organizations that partners with us, Corporations, Businesses, and Professional Organizations to tap into that pipeline.
Dan: It seems like supply and demand would be challenging for you because you have a lot of people that would want to be mentored but lack enough people who want to be a Mentor. How do you get enough Mentors and for Mentees how do how do you find those?
Dr. Holmes: Yes, indeed, I know it is or, I think it is that’s part of the reason why we’re going through this partnership strategy to be able to interface with all these different organizations at conferences like RSAC, where we find most of the junior or early career folks who need the most help. We will talk with a mid-level, or Senior at other conferences as well.
Dan: Do you have an example of a success story where somebody started in as a mentee and successfully worked their way through to a job, building a career along the way and then became a mentor?
Dr. Holmes: Yes, great question. Here is one very nice example: One member, who we will call Trevor (Dan’s naming convention, for reasons…not mine), worked as a security guard for about 10 years. He wanted to make a change to be able to get a job in Cyber Security. He started his journey by completing his AA online. Then he joined Cyversity, got access to the training and certification programs offered through our membership, (e.g. Security +, and Network +). Next, as a mentee in our mentorship program he gained guidance while focused on IT Security and Penetration testing. Trevor started learning Python and attended local conferences as a volunteer. Trevor then applied to jobs online – but, an opportunity opened up at his own company where he already worked in the IT Security department and he was able to secure and transition to a Security Operations Center (SOC) role where he now works on monitoring access control and doing threat intel.
Dan: I think people would find journey stories interesting and say to themselves, oh! this is something I can do, and I see how I could make it work in my life for me.
Dan: I appreciate your time today and I really applaud what you’re doing! I think it’s a very noble mission. It’s sorely needed and there’s so much opportunity and there’s companies just dying to hire people yet can’t find enough good people, you really solve this issue.
Dr. Holmes: Yes, I see it quite simply as a supply chain issue, ultimately, and we are trying to figure out how to insert Cyversity to create a premium supply sourced from places most companies don’t traditionally look.
We take a lot of pride in people being our premium asset, and we treat them like it.
Learn more about us online at https://www.cyversity.org/
About the Author
Dan Anderson is a winner of the Top Global CISO of the Year for 2023 and currently serves as a vCISO and On-Call Roving reporter for CyberDefense Magazine. BSEE, MS Computer Science, MBA Entrepreneurial focus, CISA, CRISC, CBCLA, C|EH, PCIP, and ITIL v3. Dan’s work includes consulting premier teaching hospitals such as Stanford Medical Center, Harvard’s Boston Children’s Hospital, University of Utah Hospital, and large Integrated Delivery Networks such as Sutter Health, Catholic Healthcare West, Kaiser Permanente, Veteran’s Health Administration, Intermountain Healthcare and Banner Health. Dan has served in positions as President, CEO, CIO, CISO, CTO, and Director, is currently CEO and Co-Founder of Mark V Security, and Cyber Advisor Board member for Graphite Health. Dan is a USA Hockey level 5 Master Coach. Current volunteering by building the future of Cyber Security professionals through University Board work, the local hacking scene, and mentoring students, co-workers, and CISO’s. Dan lives in Littleton, Colorado. Find him online at linkedin.com/in/dankanderson