Cybersecurity Has a Belonging Problem

When discussing cybersecurity, we tend to focus on barriers to entry or skills and training gaps. Joshua Copeland believes that we need to shift our focus to address the sense of community that is missing once someone actually gets in. Joshua has spent more than two decades on both sides of that problem, first in military cyber leadership and now as a Director of Cybersecurity at Crescendo, a Professor of Practice at Tulane University, and Deputy Commander of the Louisiana State Guard Cyber Reserve. He is also a founding member of Cyberr.

Joshua sees an industry full of tools and job boards while completely missing the importance of a community with a shared sense of purpose.

From Volunteering to a Career

Joshua didn't plan on a career in cybersecurity, even though he was someone who liked taking technology apart to see how it worked and occasionally making it do things it wasn't built for. When his military unit asked for a volunteer to be a "workgroup manager", he said yes without knowing what he was signing up for.

That assignment changed everything for him and set him on a path that began with military service and continued into his civilian career. Joshua has worked across cybersecurity leadership, risk management, compliance, and incident response in both military and civilian roles.

Over two decades later, the reason for staying in cyber has not changed: "What has kept me in cybersecurity is the mission. It is fundamentally the same mission I had while serving in the military: protecting people."

Regardless of whether it is for the military or a company, Joshua sees his work in cybersecurity as a continuation of the same purpose. The battlefield and threats may change, but the reason for showing up does not.

What Community Actually Built

Joshua traces his first real career opportunities back to organizations built around trust and service, like military units and professional associations. That is why he understands the value of local cybersecurity meetups, where a student, a senior engineer, a military member, and a CISO can sit in the same room and exchange ideas without job titles getting in the way. Access matters in a profession that can isolate people, especially when the work involves carrying risks that colleagues outside the field may not fully understand.

In Joshua's view, the current gap in the industry is that too many professional interactions remain transactional: people collect connections and certifications without building relationships that help them recover from mistakes or feel like they belong. He wants spaces where professionals can admit what they do not know and receive mentorship without being treated as competition. He is blunt about who needs to change first: experienced professionals talk about a talent shortage while still building unnecessary barriers for the people trying to get in.

Measuring Capability, Not Activity

Creating this sense of belonging requires more than networking; it requires a fundamental shift in how the industry measures security success. Currently, the focus is only on tools deployed, alerts generated, compliance items closed, and certifications earned. However, none of these tell you whether an organisation can actually defend itself when something goes wrong.

"Cybersecurity should be built around the mission, not the dashboard."

Instead of just focusing on the metrics, Joshua thinks we should build programs around people who understand what they are protecting and why. We also need to give them the authority to act and test these programs under real conditions. He believes that if the industry stopped rewarding the appearance of security and started demanding proof instead, the profession would look different in a few years.

Why He Joined as a Founding Member

Joshua joined Cyberr because he wants to be part of a community being built specifically for those in cybersecurity. What drew him in was the chance to help shape a community's culture while it was still being built, instead of arriving after the direction was already set. Finding community in cybersecurity can be hard, and Joshua believes that Cyberr can help solve that problem.