Cyber security awareness is one of those things that everyone can stand to learn more about, no matter what job you do or what stage of career. It’s also one of those things that can get put off when trying to prioritize day to day business. With October coming up, both the US and Europe acknowledge it as the month for cyber security awareness. While marketers in the industry tend to leap on the campaign with glee, very little substance can be gained through thinly veiled attempts to sell products. But there’s one initiative in the UK called Security Serious trying to change all that with Security Serious Week, which takes place 2-6 October 2017.
We’ve mentioned the Security Serious Unsung Heroes before, but in addition this year the organizers have set up a Security Serious Week Virtual Summit to bring listeners some candid, unscripted and marketing-free panel style webinars. Each day, professors, scholars, entrepreneurs, researchers, incubators, journalists, practitioners and visionaries will be brought together to tackle the theme of Security Serious Week 2017, Bridging the Cyber Skills Gap through Diversity and Creativity.
The full Summit line-up includes setting the scene for the skills gap, chaired by Warwick Ashford, security editor of Computer Weekly; incentives that make the UK an ideal cyber security hub, chaired by Sarb Sembhi of Virtually Informed; artificial intelligence, chaired by Pete Warren from Future Intelligence; creative employment, chaired by Vicki Gavin, CISO of the Economist Group and neuro diversity, chaired by Brian Higgins from (ISC)².
Yvonne Eskenzi, founder of Security Serious Week and co-Founder of Eskenzi PR said it best, “It is no secret that the UK is hugely under-resourced when it comes to having skilled people to protect our UK businesses, especially with the increasing and constant onslaught of cyber-attacks thwarting businesses. This year’s theme aims to get people thinking outside of the box about how they address the cyber skills gap.”
Every once in a while, an initiative comes along that is worth supporting. The Security Serious team, with its passion for making everyone in UK business more security-aware, is one of those initiatives and that’s why it has Comparitech.com’s backing.