Day of Shecurity, a series of conferences that provide cybersecurity skills and career development to women at no cost, announced it will host a virtual conference on October 28-29, 2021. This announcement comes after its highly successful March 2021 pivot to virtual events.
With such a strong response from the March 2021 Day of Shecurity event and the high demand for jobs in the cybersecurity field, Secure Diversity and the Lookout Foundation will host its next virtual Day of Shecurity on October 28 and 29, 2021, from 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. PDT (UTC – 7). For the first time, the conference will occur over two days to ease any concerns about devoting a whole day to conferencing and breaking it up for fewer hours over more dates.
Presented by Secure Diversity and The Lookout Foundation, Day of Shecurity is an initiative that launched a San Francisco-based lunch and learn in 2017 to provide career development and skills training to women interested in pursuing cybersecurity careers. The founding partners have since hosted five in-person conferences, including one international event – all free of charge to attendees. The inaugural virtual event, held on March 23, 2021, drew 1,711 registrations and 933 attendees from 53 countries. There were 85 unique presentations by 117 speakers between the main stage and session rooms. The majority of the presentations are available on the Day of Shecurity YouTube channel. This content does not include the number of technical and non-technical presentations provided by the sponsors in their expo booths.
Some highlights from the main stage included:
- Cybersecurity consultant and researcher Tomiko Evans turned poetry into a rap as her presentation asked the question, “Do we really take security seriously in this industry?”
- Hacker and security evangelist Alyssa Miller talked about the value of women in cybersecurity and made recommendations about how to be successful and achieve goals.
- Technology and cyber leader Jameeka Aaron from Auth0 discussed using emotional intelligence as the framework for cybersecurity culture.
The event was made possible – and provided training opportunities for participants – by the 46 corporate and non-profit sponsors:
- Founding: Lookout and Secure Diversity
- VIP: Atlassian, Auth0, AWS, Boston Cybernetics Institute, Bridgecrew, CyberSN, Detectify, Okta, Palo Alto Networks, & Patreon
- Gold: Earnin, Gusto, Google, Highmark Health, Lyft, Oportun, Ramagine, Salesforce, Security Innovation, Segment, & Snap
- Silver: Flexport, Netflix, PagerDuty, Pinterest, Raytheon Technologies, Technium, Verkada, & Virsec
- Bronze: Chime, CircleCI, Open Raven, Sequoia Capital, Snyk, & Tinder
- In-Kind: CyberPreserve, CyberRisk Opportunities, NIFTWIT, INE, Innovation Women, Sightline Security, We Hack Purple, Wehmeyer & Associates, & Women’s Cyberjutsu
A Critical Need
A recent study found that women now comprise up to “30% [of cybersecurity workers]…up from 24% the year before. While men still make up a majority of the cybersecurity workforce, the growing percentage of women, and their positions within organizations, suggests cybersecurity provides a rewarding career path for women who choose to pursue it.”
Although numbers of women in cybersecurity rose according to the (ISC)2 2020 data, the pandemic resulted in an estimated 2.3 million women leaving the U.S. workforce between February 2020 and February 2021. American women are participating in the professional workforce at the lowest rates since the late 80’s.
The cybersecurity workforce demand has increased, evidenced by a 2020 report from The Tessian Opportunity that found:
- The cybersecurity workforce needs to grow by 145% to meet the current global demand.
- There are more than four million unfilled cybersecurity jobs.
- If the number of women working in cybersecurity rose to equal that of men, the industry’s economic footprint in the U.S. would increase by $30.4 billion.
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