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Emma McGowan on Muck Rack

Emma McGowan

  • Senior Writer, Avast and Contributor, Freelance
Los Angeles, San Francisco
As seen in: Medium, HuffPost, BuzzFeed, Mashable, Broadly, VICE, Bustle, The Daily Dot, Mic, Security Boulevard and
Covers:  startups, tech, sex, sex tech, feminism, lgbtqia, sexual health, online security, lifestyle, politics, women's health, sex positivity
Emma McGowan Managing editor of consumer blogs @GenDigitalInc Former sex advice columnist @ Sex IDK @bustle

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Emma McGowan’s Biography

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Emma McGowan is a veteran blogger and SFSI-endorsed sex educator with over nine years of experience and upwards of 1000 articles on her byline. Her main focuses are startups and sex but she covers a range of topics. Emma is a sex/relationships/dating writer at Bustle and a senior writer at Startups.com. Her work has appeared on Buzzfeed, Broadly, Bedsider, Mashable, The Daily Dot, Mic, and The Bold Italic, among others. She’s the Editor in Chief of the sex positive sexual health site Sexual + B…

Emma McGowan’s Journalist Portfolio

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Why Won't Men Carry Umbrellas?

Why Won't Men Carry Umbrellas?

The next time you’re out in the rain, in between dodging puddles and trying your best not to get drenched, ta…

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How to Host a Dinner Party Without Completely Losing Your Mind

How to Host a Dinner Party Without Completely Losing Your Mind

But while dinner parties don’t have to be fancy, there are plenty of things about them that cause anxiety: th…

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Malala Yousafzai Tells Us Why Activists Need To Work With Other Generations To Create Change

Malala Yousafzai Tells Us Why Activists Need To Work With Other Generations To Create Change

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai may be one of the most well-known activists in the world; Apple C…

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Trying To Get Your Tubes Tied Young Can Be A Frustrating Process. Here's Why

Trying To Get Your Tubes Tied Young Can Be A Frustrating Process. Here's Why

In this week's Sex IDK column, Emma McGowan, certified sex educator and writer, answers your questions about …

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I'm A Sex Educator, & I Want To Stop Having This Convo About Herpes

I'm A Sex Educator, & I Want To Stop Having This Convo About Herpes

Last week, seemingly every type of media blew up with a report about a "herpes outbreak" in Southern Californ…

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It's Not A "Virginity Test" - It's A Dangerous Social Construct

It's Not A "Virginity Test" - It's A Dangerous Social Construct

Rapper T.I. made news earlier this month when he went on the Ladies Like Us podcast and revealed that he subj…

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Articles

Why compliance won’t save you when things break

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By Emma McGowan
| Security Boulevard Verified
Most organizations treat compliance like armor. They invest months in audit prep, build out control documentation, and celebrate when the certificate arrives. Then an actual incident hits—ransomware freezes operations at two a.m. on a Saturday—and the team discovers that none of those controls were designed to help them recover in the middle of a crisis. This gap between passing an audit and surviving a real incident is one of the most expensive blind spots in cybersecurity today.
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Aligning security investment to achieve favorable insurance terms

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By Emma McGowan
| Security Boulevard Verified
Here’s a misconception that persists across cybersecurity and insurance: that underwriters are evaluating risk against some opaque, proprietary standard that doesn’t line up with what security teams are already doing. In reality, underwriting criteria is designed to align with what a strong security program looks like. The controls insurers want to see are the same controls a good CISO is already working to implement. So where does the friction come from?
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What the 2025 healthcare cybersecurity claims data reveals

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By Emma McGowan
| Security Boulevard Verified
Healthcare organizations are absorbing more cyber risk than ever, and the claims data tells a more specific story than the headlines. Resilience has just released The State of Healthcare Cybersecurity: Risk Trends and Proven Controls for 2025, a new report drawing on portfolio-level analysis of healthcare cyber incidents from 2023 through the first half of 2025.
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Interview

Have you ever used a typewriter?

Nope!

When you're not at a computer, where are you most likely to be?

Sewing and embroidering clothes by hand.