Our work is one of the ways to break the bias - Women in cybersecurity

The reason I went into marketing as a career, was for sure, the people element. I was fascinated by how marketing could change the world! I imagined this field as ever changing, allowing me the opportunity to constantly engage with people on different levels and projects, collaborating creatively and ensuring I help spread the important messages to key stakeholders – and I was not mistaken at all!

As a young student, I took part in various PR campaigns, promotions and marketing-oriented projects, where I was invited to join Peugeot as their customer relations manager in Johannesburg, South Africa. This is where I was involved in creating and implementing strategic brand campaigns achieving a constant and dramatic increase in results. I enjoyed working in the motor industry for five years, with my last role at Land Rover before deciding to embark on a new adventure, my new journey – cybersecurity.

10
years
with Kaspersky

there have been many highlights, from being named Marketing Manager of the Year in 2015 for Emerging Markets to achieving Team of the Year with my local colleagues and being featured in Bizcommunity’s Brand Manager of the Month in 2016.

Alaina Huysamen,
Marketing Manager, Africa

The cybersecurity industry attracted me because of the incredible opportunities for self-education – it was a whole new world where I could apply my marketing and communication skills. It led me to Kaspersky in 2012, where I am currently responsible for marketing initiatives across Africa. We are continuously promoting the company with our creative and strategic campaigns aimed at end users, as well as at partners – driven by our marketing engine. We organise our own direct events, webinars and campaigns, while also working hand-in-hand with partners to help them plan and execute their Kaspersky marketing activities, with the support of marketing development funds. These activities are executed with very specific objectives in mind and can be used to recruit and develop partners or generate leads to further develop opportunities and generate revenue.

Apart from increasing customer engagement through vendor-focused strategic events, campaigns and promotions, I constantly have opportunities to learn new skills or refine and improve my existing skills while being creative. That is what I love most about my job! There have been many remarkable highlights in my exciting 10-year journey with Kaspersky, including being named Marketing Manager of the Year in 2015 for Emerging Markets, achieving Team of the Year with my local colleagues, and being featured in Bizcommunity’s Brand Manager of the Month in 2016.

My favorite project was the cybersecurity roadshows we ran at schools in Johannesburg and Cape Town, covering issues such as cyberbullying, social media use and online protection.

I suppose our work
is one of the ways to break the bias, to overcome the challenges that we face when it comes to introducing more female professionals to IT.

However, there is one project that I hold close to my heart and consider the most significant, not only for the recognition of my work, but also due to its importance as an ESG initiative with a focus on education. Our team conducted a series of interactive cybersecurity roadshows at pre-selected schools in Johannesburg and Cape Town which were aimed at attracting more attention to online safety. These eventswere aimed at children aged 7-13 and covered issues that could be dangerous for those who have only just begun to discover online space, such as cyberbullying, safe social media behaviour and the general rules of online protection. We wanted to raise awareness among the younger generation and give them relevant examples of what they need to be aware of, what could happen online and why it is so important to keep safe online.

In addition, we run global or regionally-focused training programmes and dedicated webinars. These are designed to help our partners’ sales teams to better position our solutions by understanding the difficulties that their customers could be experiencing and how they can help them manage the risks in the best possible way. We also organise technical training sessions that can help technical teams to position their products better and to become more confident in what they are doing on a daily basis. We engage our GReAT team experts and run workshops on malware analysis or incident response, enabling our partners every step of the way.

These projects could not be done without global teams, which are my role models. I am totally inspired by the exciting creative projects that they develop and launch. I suppose our work is one of the ways to break the bias, to face the challenges that we have to face when it comes to introducing more female professionals to IT. When we consider Africa and South Africa, it’s certainly a different story, and here it’s more complicated to make the industry less male-dominant. However, by gradually raising awareness, by giving girls and women more opportunities to show their skills and build great careers, we can transform the whole industry.