Kaspersky, together with Smart Africa and Africaines in Tech, has launched an innovative, science-backed career orientation test “Future You in Tech” created to promote professional development for young women in the cybersecurity industry and help remove potential entry barriers. The test is designed to help them discover which career paths best align with their interests, skills, and personality.
The IT industry continues to face a significant gender imbalance. While technology is one of the fastest-growing fields shaping the global future, women remain underrepresented due to systemic barriers such as stereotypes and unequal workplace opportunities. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2024, women make up only 28.2% of the global STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) workforce. With this new initiative, Kaspersky and its partners aim to lower these barriers by sparking interest, building awareness, and offering guidance to the next generation of women in cybersecurity.
The orientation test is designed to help young women discover which cybersecurity career paths best align with their interests, skills, personality, and values. The test guides participants through scenarios that reveal their natural problem-solving styles and strengths. Once completed, the results highlight each participant’s top two matches out of six possible cybersecurity roles. The six cybersecurity paths covered in the test are:
- Threat Intelligence — analysing cybercriminal groups and predicting their next moves.
- Security Operations (SOC) — monitoring systems, detecting threats, and responding to incidents.
- Malware Analysis — reverse-engineering malicious code and creating detection rules.
- Network Security — protecting IT infrastructure, running penetration tests, and securing networks.
- Information Security Research — uncovering vulnerabilities, exploring new attack techniques, and designing security standards.
- Security Assessment — testing and auditing systems to identify risks before attackers exploit them.
By taking just a few minutes to complete the test, young women can gain a clearer picture of how their abilities and passions align with the cybersecurity profession and take their first step towards a rewarding career protecting people, organisations, and the digital society at large.
Alongside these personalised matches, participants receive explanations of the roles and advice from Kaspersky’s female experts who work in these fields. They also receive suggested next steps such as recommended readings or practical activities to try, developed together with Smart Africa, Africaines in Tech, and Kaspersky Academy.
“We recommend young women to take this orientation test — even if you never considered a career in cybersecurity. This test would provide you with an unbiased view — while cybersecurity is a field, that requires technical skills development, it also needs curiosity, creativity, problem-solving, and resilience — qualities many young women already have. The test would help one to connect strengths with real career paths, empower to see a future in cybersecurity and to take first steps with confidence,” comments Evgeniya Russkikh, Head of Academic Affairs at Kaspersky.
This launch builds on Kaspersky’s long-term commitment to supporting women in technology. As of early 2023, women represented 25 percent of the company’s global tech workforce — a 6.9 percentage point increase over four years. To further amplify women’s voices, Kaspersky also runs the Empower Women digital project, which raises awareness of gender-related challenges, shares expert perspectives, and offers practical advice for building fairer and more inclusive environments in tech and beyond.
