Cyber Security School Success!
Our second Cyber Security School Event has now taken place at our SEP2 office in the centre of Leeds. We invited students from a local academy to our office for a fun and education filled day, giving them the opportunity to learn about attacking, defending and analysing within different cyber security scenarios, and had the opportunity to work alongside and learn from our technical experts! As well as receiving top tips on how to create a great CV in an additional session.
“I love being in front of the students and seeing the passion they showed in this sector, especially at such a young age. It’s great being able to help them level up their CV, helping them get ready to enter the working world! It’s great that SEP2 are able to offer this for the students, we’re not just saying we’re people-powered, we genuinely are”.
Ever wonder why we started our Cyber Security School initiative? We spoke to Maya – Cyber Security Analyst at SEP2 who said:
”The idea first came about during a Women in SEP2 meeting, where we were discussing ways we could encourage more women to get into the cyber security sector. We found that only 7% of our applications for the Central Response Team were women, which didn’t sit right with us.”
“We considered the full route into Cyber Security, where does the interest begin? And how can we create opportunities? We decided it made sense to start with younger kids, getting them interested at an early age and showing them how exciting Cyber Security can be! We expanded this to not only girls and women, but to other minority groups who exist in schools and may not have the same level of access into a career in tech”.
We also heard from John Tammaro, who wanted to share why it’s important to get the next generation of cyber security stars thinking about their career paths, and what it means to be an active member of the cyber security community.
“The easiest way for me to explain this is to talk about my progression in the industry. When I was making those decisions about what I wanted to do with my career, I always knew that I enjoyed working with computers, specifically networking at the time, and that’s where the story ends.
I remember to this day the question that Dominic Lyons asked the class: “Tell me what job you want when you finish the college course”.
I, like many others, said that I wanted to work in networking. Dom then requested again “Tell me a job title”.Â
I couldn’t answer.Â
Dom then proceeded to bring up the largest list of job titles I have ever seen in my life. All of those were things I could do in my career if I had wanted to. But where to start?
One of the key goals for me is to show the attendees of SEP2 Cyber Security School one of three distinctive areas of our business, as a good general starting point:Â
1. Attack (White hat, of course)
2. Defend
3. Analysis
With these three starting points, we hope to provide our audience members with a quick overview and demonstration of each of the three technical skills, and the mindset of the personal and technical attributes required to be successful in that job role.
Much like every other person within our industry, not everyone will find every topic to their taste. By providing a sample session on each focus area, we hope to encourage our students to be able to help identify their areas of interest and start to ask practical questions on how they can advance their learning to get one step ahead of their competition as they try to get their first foot through the door.
Then, when their college or university tutor asks them the question “Tell me what job you want when you finish the college course” – They will be able to answer!”
Cyber Security School has been a fantastic initiative so far, where we have thoroughly enjoyed giving something back to our community. We’re not finished yet, though! Team SEP2 are already on with planning our next Cyber Security School event, ready to invite another intake of students into our office.
If you know a school that would be interested in this initiative, or have any questions, please get in touch with People Manager, Dave Gore, via email: [email protected]
