51ĀŅĀ× Leads 2022 Women in Cybersecurity Conference

From March 17-19, Cleveland will host more than 1,500 attendees of the ninth annual at the . The conference aims to help organizations recruit, retain and advance women in cybersecurityāall while creating a community of engagement, encouragement and support for students and women in the field.
A consortium led by 51ĀŅĀ×/IoT Collaborative is serving as local host for this yearās conference and includes Greater Cleveland Partnership/RITE and Northeast Ohio CyberConsortium (NEOCC). More than 25 public, private and nonprofit organizations are collaborating to educate WiCySā professional and student attendees about Cleveland, its tech community and job opportunities.
By 2020, it was estimated that a need for 1.5 million new employees would be needed in the global information security workforce; experts in the field rightly expressed concern about falling short of this quota. In 2022, a shortage of internet technology (IT) staff dedicated to cybersecurity remains. Estimates suggest that many companies are at āmoderate or extreme riskā for cyberattacks as a result of it.
Despite women making up the , they still only comprise about 20-25% of STEM students, despite the growing need for qualified professionals. 51ĀŅĀ× is helping close the gender gap in cybersecurity, according to , associate professor in the universityās Information Systems department in The Monte Ahuja College of Business.
āOne of the biggest strengths that we have at Cleveland State is that while we donāt have a dedicated degreeāyet, weāll sayāwe as an institution are approaching cybersecurity in an interdisciplinary way,ā said Dr. Spears, who is also Faculty Chair for WiCyS 2022.
āThe Monte Ahuja College of Business, Washkewicz College of Engineering and C|M Law all have courses and our graduates who follow these tracts are coming out and placing into really good cybersecurity jobs with world-class organizations. Thatās something that Iām very proud of,ā she added.
To that end, 51ĀŅĀ× is proud to introduce four alumnae who make up part of Clevelandās emerging cybersecurity leadershipāincredibly talented women from The Monte Ahuja College of Business who WiCyS attendees are likely to bump into, alongside other like-minded cyber Vikings at the conference.
Nahla Youssef (left) is an IT Technical Analyst for a cybersecurity team at a well-known Fortune 500 manufacturing company headquartered in Cleveland: āYou have to be 110% proactive and try to be ahead of [cybersecurity threats] because there are ābad actorsā spending 24 hours a day, 7 days a week trying to hack companies to steal information or plant ransomware.ā .
Prerna Narayanan (right) is currently a cybersecurity consultant with , one of the ābig four accounting firmsā worldwide, and she has designs on becoming a partner in the firm someday: āI want to be in the position to encourage more women to join the field of cybersecurity,ā she said. āProviding that pathway for other women in a male dominated field is important.ā .
Angela Salviejo (right center) is the Director of ā Digital Innovation Accelerator and a 20-year veteran of the organization. She encouraged Alexis Lee (left center) to apply at Sherwin as an IT Professional Apprentice in their Threat Management division. Lee remarked on the vastness of the Sherwin-Williams workforce. ā[People] just see Sherwin-Williams as the paint store down at the corner and not how itās all really executed,ā she said. Lee impressed Salviejo right away. āI told our leadership āKeep your eye on this girl! Do not let her get away. I promise you, she is a future leader at Sherwin,āā said Salviejo. Theyāve become quite a team since then. .
Engaged Learning
Thinking about Cybersecurity? Hereās a fun fact about this hot career: employers have shown that they are willing to shell out the big bucks to address cybersecurity. The average cyber professional with a bachelorās degree makes $116,000 per year, and masterās degree-holders can expect . Engineering and computer science salaries are the fastest growing salaries of any discipline, according to recent data cited by the .