I believe in using every tool available to put your best foot forward. The thoughts and experiences on this page are my own; I use AI to help ensure the grammar is accurate.
I made a promise at the start of 2024, and I put it on video on TikTok (TikTok content will be making a comeback) to keep myself accountable. Boy oh boy, did I do a poor job of reaching my goal. Now, I’m putting it in writing for the same reason, just slightly modified. Back in 2024, I wanted to focus on Hispanics/Latinos in cybersecurity and bring awareness to the gap, talk honestly about what creates it, and do my small part in closing it. Now I want to bring awareness to all underrepresented groups who have a hard time seeing themselves in a career field like IT/Cyber.
Let me start with the number that motivated all of this.
The Numbers
When I recorded that video, I cited a statistic that genuinely surprised me when I first came across it: according to the Aspen Digital Tech Policy Hub, only 4% of cybersecurity professionals in the United States were Hispanic as of 2022. More recent data from Zippia’s 2025 analysis puts the figure at around 9% of cybersecurity analysts, which sounds better, right? Mission accomplished? Well, not exactly… Let’s hold it up against the bigger picture.
As of 2024, Hispanic and Latino people make up 20% of the total U.S. population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. That means even by the more generous estimate, Hispanic representation in cybersecurity is less than half of what it should be if the field simply reflected the country it serves.
That gap isn’t a coincidence, and it isn’t an accident. It’s the result of a set of compounding barriers that have gone unaddressed for a long time.
I’m not going to pretend I have any solutions to these. What I do have is something a lot of statistics don’t - firsthand experience on both sides of that gap.
I Lived This
I grew up in a household where technology wasn’t a career anyone talked about. Nobody in my circle was working in IT or cyber. Nobody pointed at a computer and said, “There’s your future.” The path wasn’t visible because no one I identified with was on it - at least not where I could see them.
A question that has followed me ever since is: how many people never get that push? How many people with curiosity and problem-solving instincts never find out that this field is a possibility for them, simply because no one told them?
The Barriers Are Real
Representation gaps don’t emerge from nothing; they are manufactured by the environments that surround them. I personally believe there are structural reasons why this field remains at 4% - 9% Hispanic, and it’s worth naming them.
Visibility is the first one. You really can’t aspire to something you’ve never seen. When the faces you see in cybersecurity don’t look like you, the unconscious message is that this space isn’t for you or isn’t attainable. That message is wrong, but it’s loud.
Access is the second one. Cybersecurity education, certification prep, and quality mentorship aren’t equally available. If you’re in a well-resourced school district, you more than likely have a head start. If you’re a college student trying to figure out how to pay for a certification exam while working full-time, the path is harder - not impossible, but harder.
Language and cultural barriers add another layer. For families where English isn’t the first language, there is a disconnect when attempting to navigate a professional field with its own vocabulary and unwritten norms. The people you look up to for support (this instance - family) can’t help you in your journey and can only offer you the famous words of “Echale ganas mijo/a” or “Give it your all”. They’ll do their best to try to understand what you’re going through, but ultimately, that disconnect is too great. This alone is a daunting task. Again, not impossible, just harder.
None of these barriers means the door is closed. Plenty of others and I are proof that it isn’t. But acknowledging they exist is an honest starting point for doing anything about them.
Why It Matters Beyond Representation
Here’s something the diversity conversation sometimes misses: this isn’t just about fairness. Most of us know life isn’t fair, but that doesn’t mean we should sit around and let this gap widen and do nothing to close it. It’s also about what the field loses when it stays unvarying.
Cybersecurity is fundamentally about understanding how people and systems get exploited and protecting against that. A workforce that reflects a narrow slice of society is less equipped to protect the full range of people, organizations, and communities that are under threat. The idea of diverse teams theoretically brings different threat models, different social engineering awareness, and different perspectives on what an attacker might know about a target. That’s not a soft argument, it’s a security argument.
What I’m Doing About It
NGCC exists because of this gap. The mentorship and visibility piece is a key pillar of what I’m trying to build here. It’s not meant to be an afterthought, but serves as a cornerstone of what I am trying to achieve.
That means writing posts like this one. It means being visible as a Hispanic/Latino cybersecurity professional so that someone who relates can see that this path exists. It means talking plainly about how I got here and what inspires me to continue down this path.
If Nobody Has Told You Yet
The field needs you. Not as a diversity metric or to check a box. In my case, it was a simple number that inspired me to try to make a change. 4% is not a ceiling; it’s a starting point that needs to change. Change happens one person at a time, one community at a time, one honest conversation at a time.
If nobody told you this field was for you — consider this your sign.
- Jose F. Caro
I believe in using every tool available to put your best foot forward. The thoughts and experiences on this page are my own; I use AI to help ensure the grammar is accurate.
Discalaimer The jump from 4% (Aspen) to 9% (Zippia) might be a mix of actual growth and better data collection. In 2022, data collection was still struggling with the “race vs. ethnicity” confusion on forms. In 2025, more companies and analysts have adopted the combined question format (like the new Census standard), which usually results in higher, more accurate reporting of Hispanic identity.
Sources cited in this post:
- Aspen Digital Tech Policy Hub — Hispanic cybersecurity workforce representation (2022), as reported by Insurance Journal
- Zippia — Cyber Security Analyst Demographics and Statistics (2025): https://www.zippia.com/cyber-security-analyst-jobs/demographics/
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Minority Health — Hispanic/Latino Health, ACS 2024 estimates: https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/hispaniclatino-health
