3 Ways Women Are Uniquely Impacted by Cyber Threats

As we observe International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, an industry-recognized expert with 20+ years of experience in cybersecurity, Holly Rollo, Advisor, RiskIQ, writes how cyber threats create unique obstacles for women and ways we can come together to address them. 

My sister is a working mother in San Francisco with two kids under ten facing Zoom schooling while keeping food on the table as an insurance underwriter. She and her husband have a specialty wine bar in a city full of bars and restaurants hit hard by the pandemic, so her insurance job is critical to supporting the family. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted women uniquely as primary caregivers. While my own children are grown adults now, I continue to wonder at my sister’s resilience through this situation, unable to help her with my niece and nephew since we are in separate ‘safe-pods.’ As a woman in cybersecurity, it has also caused me to reflect on how a wave of cyberthreats have compounded the unintended consequences of this strange time, and how women are uniquely impacted.

As we observe International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, I want to call out three ways that I believe cyber threats create unique obstacles for women today and ways we can come together to address them. I’ll start by also saying every woman’s experience is different, so my perspective and research on the matter are intended to shine a light – in a general way – on the issues. They don’t apply to all women and families in every situation.

1. Digital Finance & Procurement leads to Personal Fraud & Identity Theft

According to recent studies,Opens a new window women manage most households’ finances—running budgets, paying bills, and reconciling bank accounts—meaning they’re disproportionately affected by threats targeting financial services, such as phishing and malware like banking trojansOpens a new window . Along with making most of the financial decisions, women are more likely to decide how family income is spent on consumer goods. With most transactions happening online during COVID-19, even grocery shopping can be risky, exposing women to threats like credit card skimming and malware hiding in mobile apps. 

On top of that, with the increase in digital banking and expanded digital services available for online grocery delivery, meal planning, and other in-home requirements, we are using more online consumer applications. That means we’re linking our bank accounts to more things than ever before. Women also make up the bulk of those starting or managing small businesses in 2020, so we’re using more startup and business administration services like Wix, Canva, Legal Zoom, QuickBooks, Shopify, Alibaba.

We don’t often think enough about the massive digital ecosystems and supply chains that go into these services and may take them for granted. However, all it takes is one weak link, which the provider may not even know exists, for them to be compromised. 

We know that these large e-commerce companies and e-banks are on the cutting edge when it comes to security technology for their silo. They can recruit the best talent in their security operations and fraud centers, but who is watching the seams as we all individually build out what I will refer to as our ‘Personal Money Cloud Infrastructure?’ What CISO do we have in our household looking at threats to that?

Learn More: Why Cybersecurity Certifications Could Be Your Greatest Asset in 2021 

2. Digital Healthcare & Wellness leads to Personal Fraud & Data Privacy during COVID

As with household accounting, women also take on a heavier responsibility in managing the family’s healthcare requirements—doctor’s visits, prescriptions, dealing with insurance providers, etc. Due to expanded regulations in these areas, more providers and third-parties are digitally transforming in the face of our global health crisis even before the pandemic. We see more digital options for connecting our credit cards or ACH to expanded services such as e-pharmacies, health record applications, and even consumer health and fitness apps.

Medical insurance companies are notoriously difficult to work with, but this is compounded with the rise of medical coding issues on the medical provider side as more offices digitally transition due to new compliance requirements. Couple these two with the current job losses due to COVID. You have more people now doing things like switching to COBRA plans or shopping for new plans under the Affordable Care Act. With change comes more opportunity for threat actors to take you as their next victim. Then, there are the other medical providers such as diagnostic services or plastic surgery centers, for example, who aren’t always on the cutting edge of cybersecurity but seem to be getting targeted as well.

There is no question that  COVID-19 and COVID-related cybercrime disproportionately affect women. Women are more likely to make family doctor appointments, schedule a vaccine, and make other healthcare-related decisions. With this dynamic, women are disproportionately affected by threats with COVID-19 misinformation and pandemic-related lures. 

In this state of mass vaccination rollout, many women take the lead either in their households or for their parents, trying to find the best way to get them on the list. Since the process is different across states and counties for how vaccine approval and administration work, suddenly we find ourselves staring at a rudimentary Google Form on a non-descript website being asked for our Social Security number and other private information. If this isn’t ripe for fraud, I don’t know what is.

Also Read:  International Women’s Day: 5 Most Inspirational Women in Fintech

3. Code Bias & Decentralized Finance leads to Gender Equality & Social Justice

In the last three years or so, this issue has gained more exposure. It has recently been overshadowed by more pressing social justice issues such as climate change, global pandemic, and economic inequality. Those issues are critical, but we can’t let this topic go to the back burner either as machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) are rapidly evolving under our noses whether we like it or not. What’s concerning to me is how rapidly the digital future of the financial system is growing and evolving as the world leans into alternative currencies, blockchain, and decentralized finance. 

In the past year, I fell into the rabbit hole of cryptocurrency, trying to find a hedge against inflation. I’m not alone. A recent study Opens a new window reported that women make up 43% of crypto investors versus 13% last year, making sense given how involved we are with household finances. However, just like the early days of the internet, the early days of cryptocurrency are unquestionably dominated by ‘bitcoin bros’ (a term not coined by me, pardon the pun). While it’s great that more women are getting in on the investment side, the industry will be shaped by those building the exchanges and trading ecosystem, DeFi projects, and making decisions on everything resembling oversight. 

For an equitable future, we need to realize that the future of finance is being created and debated — but not arbitrated—by a group of people who don’t represent everyone. Women are putting more money in, but we aren’t represented in the underlying code that powers the entire system. While there has been a recognition that AI models can help reduce gender bias in things like lending, it is unclear how this will manifest in a development environment that is based on a wholly ungoverned, unregulated, and decentralized model.

Learn More: The Changing Role of Cybersecurity Evangelists in 2021

So Now What?

These are not just women’s issues—these are financial issues, medical issues, mental health issues, and social justice issues that affect all of us as sisters, brothers, fathers, mothers, daughters, and sons. We need to focus on getting more diversity of all kinds in on the more challenging aspects of managing cyber threats, protecting against fraud, and developing the future code base, and we must do it together. 

We need more women at every level; more security analysts, more policymakers, more board members, more advocates, mentors, and more CEOs. We need to share the risk with our partners at home, lest we become the single point of vulnerability in our own households’ digital attack surface. We need more support for women as we transition back to life after COVID, back into the workforce, perhaps pivoting to new sectors or new roles. We need to keep diversity and inclusion as a top priority in the cybersecurity industry at all levels and not just think of it as a passing trend from a legacy a movement that feels like decades ago. 

This isn’t about leaning in; it’s about moving forward together.

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