Security News > 2021 > July > Respect in Security initiative aims to build reporting lines for infosec bods suffering harassment at work, conferences and online
A new initiative aims to make it easier to report personal abuse and harassment within the information security industry - without the involvement of social media mobs.
Respect in Security, launched today with support from Trend Micro's veep of security research Rik Ferguson, Lisa Forte, a partner at Red Goat Cyber Security and other notable folk from the UK infosec scene, aims to set up a "Vulnerability style" reporting scheme for infosec professionals to flag up harassment and abuse to abusers' employers.
Research commissioned by Respect in Security said about a third of 302 industry professionals had experienced harassment at work while online and in-person, with a significant amount of in-person harassment occurring at industry events and during work socials.
Forte shared her personal experience of the kind of harassment she hopes the initiative will tackle: "A gentleman in the industry printed out my profile photo, cut a hole where my mouth was, and then proceeded to film himself doing obscene things to that and send that to me on LinkedIn with his name and his company attached to it. And that's... Well, yeah, a what the fuck moment."
RiS' aim is to encourage reporting of harassment directly to employers.
As Forte put it: "This is for end users as well, because a large company may have a SOC, they may have a very large security team employing a large quantity of security professionals." .