You’ve probably heard this before but that doesn’t mean it’s not still 100% relevant:
Security is a moving target.
So how you advance your skills and knowledge to match these shifting challenges and priorities?
This is just one of the topics we’re eager to explore with you just 26 days from now, at Ladies in Cybersecurity!
Diversity is central to this new event we’ve created for the DefCamp community and for anyone who’s interested in building an infosec career. This is reflected in 3 ways:
- The all-female speaker line-up
- Our guests’ incredibly varied backgrounds and experience (from junior to CEO, from highly technical to mastering soft skills)
- The mix of topics and talks the day packs.
The presentations you’ll see at the event also speak to this principle we care deeply about:
- Hack the World: IT/IOT/ICS SCADA OSINT by Christina Kubecka
- Why I didn’t run away from the infosec community by Jelena Milosevic
- Securing sensitive accounts with MFA and Behavioral Biometrics by Laura Tamas
- 5 Key Decisions That Shape Your Infosec Career by Andra Zaharia
You deserve a rewarding experience, so we’re keenly focused on providing you with practical know-how you can apply right away.
Here are 8 things you can learn if you join us on March 21st at Impact Hub Bucharest:
1. Why and when you should start a career in cybersecurity
Maybe you’re on a technical career path that’s not related to infosec and you want to understand how you could hone your skills in this field. Or perhaps you work in finance, law, or marketing, but you’re attracted to the issues cybersecurity is trying to solve.
Whatever your motivation may be, our speakers and the DefCamp team will strive to share their experience as extensively as possible during the event.
Our goal is not only to facilitate this knowledge transfer from our guests to you but also to answer your most burning questions. This is a great opportunity to find out what it’s really like to work in this field, with all its challenges and rewards.
2. Real success and failure stories from the infosec world
When you’re standing on the sidelines, it’s sometimes difficult to envision how you’d fare in the context of a real infosec job. Media headlines can be especially deceiving if you don’t have enough know-how to discern fact from fiction (or exaggeration).
In such a complex field that’s deeply influenced by context (organizational, political, geographical, etc.), it’s tricky to see behind headlines and understand how achievements are built and how failures happen.
Our goal is to debunk common misconceptions about working in information security by giving you a chance to speak to our guests directly. If you bring a list of questions, you’ll certainly gather useful tips by the time the event ends.
3. How to navigate the infosec community
Jelena Milosevic is a nurse and her interest in how medical data is handled and protected led her to become an independent researcher in cybersecurity.
You might have heard or even experienced stories in which people without a less (or no) technical background are marginalized or even harassed on Twitter or other platforms by those who call themselves infosec pros (although their attitude suggests otherwise). However, this shouldn’t discourage you from pursuing your dream.
Jelena will talk about how she overcame these challenges and broke through in the community. What’s more, she even became friends with some of the best people in the industry and makes a significant and important contribution to the field.
4. Which competitive advantages to cultivate for your infosec career
During Ladies in Cybersecurity, we’ll strive to answer some of the common questions many of us wrestled with or continue to think about.
Some of these questions can be:
Where do I start?
How do I choose? (FOMO is real and you can’t know everything in infosec, try as you might.)
How do I prioritize my learning so I can make good progress and also apply my newly-acquired knowledge?
What do I need to learn to better understand cybersecurity in the context of how businesses operate?
What are the best information sources to build my infosec knowledge?
Jelena, Christina, Laura, Valentina, and all the other guests will share what worked for them. This means you can explore different perspectives and choose what aligns with your interests and direction.
5. What it’s like to be the only woman on the team
It can be intimidating enough to be on your first cybersecurity role and being the only women on the team doesn’t really make it easier.
In spite of the gaping gender imbalance, our female speakers are living proof that you can find allies anywhere and forge authentic, collegial relationships in infosec and beyond.
Here’s another challenge that comes with being the only woman in an overwhelmingly male team: imposter syndrome. If you ever experienced it, please know you’re not alone in this.
We hope to discuss honestly and openly about these topics and more, so you’ll have actionable steps to follow once the event wraps up.
6. How to make better career decisions
On your way to leveling up as an infosec specialist, you’ll be faced with many decisions. Becoming better at making these choices can have a significant positive impact on your career and help you enjoy the ride and results a lot more.
Some of these decisions may pop up in the form of questions such as:
Do I want to become a people manager or build towards a high-impact individual contributor role?
How do I know I’m making real, measurable progress?
What challenges should I prepare for if I take this job?
How can I improve at dealing with change and shifting priorities?
No one’s born with all the answers or the perfect infosec expertise, but you can make substantial progress when you act with intent.
Learning from others, debating with them, and getting feedback also play an essential part in making increasingly better choices.
7. How the infosec culture is changing
With security becoming part of companies’ USP (Unique Selling Proposition), many aspects are transforming.
With more (media) exposure comes more responsibility.
Now more than ever, the industry needs more skilled contributors. It requires more people who can persuasively speak about infosec topics to business decision-makers and users from around the world.
The conversation around diversity is also an essential one if cybersecurity is to attract talented individuals from diverse backgrounds, with varied skillsets and perspectives.
If you follow this topic throughout the event, you might find the right opportunities for someone with your experience, know-how, and abilities. Just make sure to keep an eye out for them.
8. Which are the real burning issues in the industry right now
You probably noticed the flood of articles focused on predictions for cybersecurity in 2019. They’ve become somewhat of a tradition, useful for some and loathed by others.
There’s no better way to separate fact from exaggeration than listening to people who deal with complex infosec challenges on the daily.
Ladies in Cybersecurity is also an opportunity to discuss and learn about the cybersecurity threats that create the highest level of instability across business sectors and geographies.
If these topics align with your interests and needs, let’s get together on March 21st and discuss them in depth.
Should you want to get even more details about the event, we recently wrote a dedicated article about it.
Before you go, keep this in mind:
- The event lives up to its name, so the speakers are exclusively female. We want to shine a light on their valuable stories about infosec and personal development.
- Everyone can learn from them, not only girls and women, so you don’t have to feel left out (which would defeat the purpose of this event 🙂 ).
- We’re expecting 150+ people to an intimate event that’s focused on sharing experiences, learning from one another, and discussing both failures and successes.
- Ladies in Cybersecurity happens 26 days from now, on a Thursday (March, 21st) at Impact Hub Bucharest.
We hope you’ll join us to explore the many facets of cybersecurity and all the ways it’s transforming our lives.