Neurodivergence in Cyber

0:00:00.0 Emily Wearmouth: Hello and welcome to the Security Visionaries Podcast, a place where we bring experts together to talk about things that should interest anybody in the data, cyber or broader tech industry. Today we're going to talk about neurodiversity and cybersecurity, and I'm your host, Emily Wearmouth. But let me introduce my guest. Holly Foxcroft is the head of neurodiversity research in cyber and consulting at Stott and May consulting. Holly, who is autistic with ADHD and has a son with autism, began her career in electrical and cyber warfare. She now combines her two worlds of neurodiversity and cyber by running employer awareness events, writing policies, and championing inclusion. She's contributed to academic and industry research, and in her current role, she supports employers in becoming neuro-inclusive. So welcome to the podcast, Holly.

0:00:49.8 Holly Foxcroft: Thank you so much for inviting me and having me. Such a pleasure to be here.

0:00:54.0 Emily Wearmouth: We are gonna dig into some really interesting questions I've got here all about neurodiversity, but before we do that, I wanted to start by letting our listeners know a little bit more about yourself. So do you want to, in your own words, who you are and what your personal experiences with neurodiversity?

0:01:11.3 Holly Foxcroft: Yeah. I mean, you gave me such a fabulous introduction, I say thank you. And sometimes when I hear people talking about myself, I kind of get lost thinking they're actually talking about someone else. I actually started my career in the defence in the Royal Navy, and I've always been attracted to very analytical things, things that are just very black and white. And electrical warfare and cyber warfare really turned my head and I really loved my career there. And what I did within the capacity of those roles was actually a lot of awareness and working with people who I felt at the time as an undiagnosed neurodivergent person, very comfortable with our social standards, perhaps in those environments were easier. And then when I actually entered civilian life, I went into cybersecurity recruiting, and that's when I came about understanding that we do not have a cybersecurity skills gap. We have a communication issue, in actually finding those individuals or supporting those individuals who have that particular skillset and welcoming them and keeping them into this industry.

0:02:24.4 Emily Wearmouth: Do you think then that conversations about neurodiversity in cybersecurity are always constructive to have?

0:02:31.1 Holly Foxcroft: I think conversations about neurodiversity in any industry are going to be constructive. Through research, we have found that there is a higher number of neurodivergent individuals in the cybersecurity industry than perhaps others. The research is limited. I'm hoping that there will be more research. Let's think of our brains. We have a neuro type, all of us, we have neuro types, and that makes us all neurodiverse. It's that 15-20% of us are neurodivergent, and that means that we may either think, learn, and process information differently, either by diagnosis such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia. There are many neuro types that we can include within neurodivergence, but we are all neurodiverse. But the way that a neurodivergent brain thinks naturally, the way it's wired, particularly honours cybersecurity skillsets.

0:03:34.9 Emily Wearmouth: Right.

0:03:35.4 Holly Foxcroft: The creative thinking, analytical thinking.

0:03:39.4 Emily Wearmouth: Fantastic in a crisis.

0:03:43.0 Holly Foxcroft: I've always said, if you have an IR team, then you're gonna want to hope that you have what I would say is an ADHD profile within that team. As the way that neuro type thinks and works, they really are your best asset in a crisis.

0:03:58.1 Emily Wearmouth: That's interesting because often you think about team planning in terms of skillsets or experience, but you are adding another layer in there about actually how an individual within the team's brain is wired and why you might need to plan for that diversity.

0:04:12.5 Holly Foxcroft: Absolutely. And also when we are talking about human risk management, it's also understanding outside of your security teams, how does your organisation think, learn, process information? Because when you are delivering security awareness or when you are working with individuals who may be handling specific information, are you ensuring that you are supporting their neuro type? Because that's a cybersecurity consideration within your cybersecurity awareness space. We know we have seen in research, and it's pretty obvious that diversity of thought brings so many benefits. But what is different here is it's accepting neurodivergence for how it wholly looks, not just on the celebrated stuff, that analytical thinking, that hyperfocus, that creative thinking. The neurodiversity is also asking to respect wholly how that person presents with their neuro type.

Emily Wearmouth [00:05:03] Okay. All right. What do I have next on my list? I wanted to know which you've talked about. What was interesting, which is the episode that you think is most worth scrolling back and listening to.

0:05:14.8 Emily Wearmouth: Right. So you can't just get the advantages of these neurodiverse people, you have to also acknowledge that they're a complete package that might also have other needs, or you might just need to work with them differently to other members of the team?

Emily Wearmouth Yeah that's a good pick. It was very honest. And they talk not only about their own resilience, but also their team and how to manage resilience within their team. So I enjoyed that one a lot as well as a good one to pick.

0:05:27.7 Holly Foxcroft: You approach neurodiversity respecting a person as an individual, not by their diagnosis. And with neurodivergence, it's almost like to be accepted within our society, we have to have that superhero status. Let's just think, and I invite our listeners to think of a person with autism. Quite often we will think of a male and we will often think of used to be mathematician, but now it's more computer genius and that's fed to us through media representation. Let's look at Rain Man. This is very much generational because I've spoken to some younger people in training and they don't know who Rain Man is.

0:06:11.1 Emily Wearmouth: No, I was gonna say. It's definitely dating.

0:06:16.0 Holly Foxcroft: And, or we think of Sheldon Cooper in the Big Bang Theory or Mr. Robot in the Netflix series. However, they have a superhero status, and that's the only way for us to be a welcome part of society. And some of us, we don't have those superpowers just because I'm autistic. Like I said earlier, I'm driven to the analytical and the creative thinking part, but my maths, GCSE will tell you otherwise that I'm definitely not a mathematical genius. Again, that's stereotyping. Who knows, perhaps if I did study in that field, I probably could be because of the way my brain works, but it doesn't come naturally to me. And it builds again into what we t