When a global demand for unfilled cybersecurity talent is expected to reach 3.5 million by 2021 and as cyber criminals continue to dominate today’s headlines, it’s time for women to come to the rescue. This session will provide guidance and equip attendees with the confidence and skills needed to pursue a career in cybersecurity in an interactive format and to help encourage more females into the cyberspace.

This session aims to provide valuable insight into the life of a cyber security whilst knocking down the misconceptions of what a ‘hacker’ should look like. Conversations on why women play a crucial role for the advancement of the cyber industry will be triggered in an interactive format.

To begin with, the presenter will share her personal story on how she began her career in Cyber Security, whilst highlighting the real challenges she faced of being the only girl in her company and how she combated the ‘imposter syndrome’ in her workplace. This opens up the space for attendees to be interactive and share their thoughts or questions.

The speaker will then go on to explore tips on how to take advantage of an industry that needs you, covering topics such as grassroots into Cyber and the key professional qualifications you should work towards. In addition to this, the conversations will roll on to discuss the different career paths within Cyber where attendees can participate in an interactive survey to help deduce a potential Cyber career fit for them based on their personality traits. The aim here is to entice the attendees into wanting to discover more about these job roles and to give them a confidence boost in believing they have the skills to succeed.

Furthermore, attendees will be presented with a security baseline on how to protect yourself online. The incentive is to educate attendees on basic security practices such as using secure passwords. This allows attendees to be introduced to the technicality of a security role and to walk away from the session knowing that they have possessed valuable technical skills, encouraging them to discover more.

The session concludes by highlighting the level of growth and opportunities available within the industry and how collectively we can combat the Cybersecurity skills shortage crisis whilst promoting more women in the industry.