Cyber Security Explorer Day

Cyber Security Explorer Day

On Wednesday 6 March a group of 26 Year 8 girls joined students from other schools from the West Midlands for a Cyber Security Explorer Day at Aston University. 

The opening talk began with a statistic that despite cyber security being one of the fastest growing industries, just 17% of women are employed in cyber security, compared with women making up 51% of the population.  The aim of the day was to inspire, inform and motivate young females to pursue a pathway into cyber security. 

Keynote speaker was Professor Simon Hepburn, CEO of The Security Institute and Visiting Professor at Aston University.  He gave an inspiring talk to the students, emphasising that there is a huge skills shortage in the security industry and it needs more people.  He shared that although he left secondary school with no qualifications, through hard work and determination he has gone on to have a successful career in the charity, education and careers sector.  He ended with “be the best version of yourself.”

The students then moved from the lecture theatre to one of the computer labs for a presentation by a lecturer which included a live cyber threat map showing where hacks were currently taking place around the world,  and a powerful video of how easy it can be for hackers to access your personal information.  The morning session ended with a lively cyber security quiz on Kahoot!

After lunch, students took part in a ‘Capture The Flag Competition’ where they used the CyberChef application to complete a series of decoding, content extraction and encryption challenges.   The competition was rated by the majority of students as the best part of the day. Congratulations to Megan Nash who came joint third and won a pen, and Evie Hoare who came joint second and won a Bluetooth speaker; both were very happy with their prizes!  No one went home empty handed as everyone received a goodie bag.

As a result of taking part in the day 42% of students agreed that they were considering a career in cyber security.  Lily Beswick and Mimi van Ufford summarised their day "It was really fun and we got to see computing and cyber security in a different way."

A huge thank you to Aston University for organising such a brilliant day and to sponsors QinetiQ.