Talent shortage in cybersecurity is an established problem and poses serious implications for both public and private sectors, as the importance of cybersecurity continues to grow (Burrell, 2020; Ventures, 2017). Cybersecurity is more crucial than ever before, primarily because society has never been as connected as it is now. Businesses and governments are putting more sensitive assets on networks for the functionality that a connected world provides. While this has profound benefits, these assets are very attractive targets for hackers. As the frequency and impact of cybersecurity breaches increases, so will the demand for cybersecurity professionals. Cybersecurity Ventures, a US based leading research firm and publisher behind the Cybercrime Magazine, reports that the number of unfilled cybersecurity jobs grew by 350 percent between 2013 and 2021, from one million to 3.5 million positions (Ventures, 2017).

One potential solution to the talent shortage is to increase diversity in the sector. The lack of diversity is even more pronounced in cybersecurity than in other technology fields within STEM (Caldwell, 2013). For under-represented individuals who manage to enter the cybersecurity sector, opportunities for advancement remain limited (Bagchi-Sen et al., 2010). Increasing diversity would not only help alleviate the talent shortage, it would also broaden the values, perspectives and lived experiences within the workforce. Given the detrimental impact of implicit bias on cybersecurity solutions, increasing diversity would result in more robust and innovative ideas and approaches (Badhwar, 2021). With so many open positions, and the potential strategic benefits of diversity, why is it that cybersecurity has not been able to attract, retain and advance a more diverse workforce including immigrants?

The cybersecurity sector has traditionally drawn its workforce from technical disciplines such as mathematics, computer science and computer engineering – disciplines which include disproportionate numbers of immigrants (Jacob et al., 2018). Canada’s economic immigration system, administered primarily through Express Entry since 2015, prioritizes applicants who have high level English/French language skills, graduate level education and Canadian pre-landing work experience (IRCC, 2020). Although Express Entry does not have an ‘eligible occupations’ list, the system nonetheless tends to favour newcomers from certain fields. STEM educated immigrants, and information technology specialists in particular, are over-represented among newcomers (IRCC, 2020). In fact, high skilled immigrants are twice as likely to have a STEM degree as their Canadian-born counterparts (Picot & Hou, 2019). Unfortunately, a large proportion of these highly skilled STEM immigrants face barriers integrating into the Canadian labour market. They are much more likely than Canadian STEM graduates to be working in jobs that do not require a university education, and among those who do find work in STEM fields, they earn significantly less than Canadian-born workers (Picot & Hou, 2019).

In addition to shaping the educational and occupational profiles of newcomers, Canada’s immigration system has also significantly shifted the ethno-racial and gender make-up of new arrivals. Before the 1960s, when the human capital-based points-system was instituted, most immigrants came from Western Europe and only 10.2 percent of newcomers were racialized (or visible) minorities. However, for those arriving between 2011 and 2016 the proportion of visible minorities topped 81 percent, with the majority arriving from Asia and the Middle East (Reitz & Banerjee, 2021). The gender composition of economic immigrants has also changed dramatically over time, as more women apply as economic principal applicants. In 1980, just over 20 percent of economic principal applicants were women; by 2019, women made up about 47 percent of economic principal applicants in Canada (IRCC, 2020). These immigrant women tend to be much more highly educated than Canadian-born women (Adserà & Ferrer, 2014), and are more likely to be trained in STEM fields (Boyd & Tian, 2018). Despite this, they are consistently the lowest earners in the labour market (Chui, 2011). Racialized immigrant women are often “triply disadvantaged”, as they suffer the negative cumulative effects of being female, a racialized minority, and an immigrant (Boyd & Yiu, 2016).

While there has been some empirical research on the labour market integration of STEM immigrants generally, the cybersecurity sector has not specifically been investigated. Given the massive growth, the labour shortages, and the strategic importance of diversity within this sector, this is a crucial gap within the literature. We know that many skilled newcomers find a disconnect between the promise of immigration and the reality of the Canadian labour market, with factors such as devaluation of foreign credentials and lack of Canadian work experience often undermining labour market integration (Banerjee, Verma, & Zhang, 2019). For immigrant women, gender role expectations within and outside the family add an extra layer of challenge (Phan et al., 2015). In this study, we will go beyond these factors to explore whether there are unique aspects of the cybersecurity sector that pose additional barriers to diversity and inclusion for immigrants. The analysis will provide insights into avenues for addressing these barriers.

Summary: This project focuses on exploring the intersectionality of gender, racialization, and immigrant status within the cybersecurity sector. The project aims to examine the impact of these factors on labour market experiences, with a specific focus on identifying challenges and barriers to entry and advancement for immigrant talent within the cybersecurity field.  By analyzing both quantitative data from the 2021 Canadian Census of Population and qualitative insights from interviews with stakeholders in the cybersecurity industry, the research seeks to provide a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics at play.