IBM Offers Women Scholarships to Hacker Halted Security Conference

PRESS RELEASE

EC-Council and IBM announced today a scholarship program for women to attend EC-Council’s Hacker Halted security conference free of charge. Funded by IBM Security, the scholarship is designed to help address the underrepresentation of women in cybersecurity and help women further their skills and expertise in this high-demand field.

The cybersecurity industry is facing a talent shortage that is anticipated to reach 1.8 million open and unfilled information security jobs within the next several years. Global Information Security Workforce Study, 2017 With women representing only 11 percent of the information security workforce¹, creating more opportunities for women in security is a critical part of improving the talent pool in the fight against cybercrime.

Hacker Halted will take place Oct. 9-10, 2017 in Atlanta, Georgia and is hosted by EC-Council, creators of the Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) certification. IBM has sponsored the Hacker Halted conference and Global Cyberlympics for the past three years. This year, for the first time, IBM will fund a scholarship that allows all women who are interested in attending the show to do so without cost.

"Improving the diversity of the cybersecurity workforce is essential to overcoming the growing threats and challenges facing the industry - and supporting growth opportunities for women in this field is a critical part of that equation," said Diane Delaney, Worldwide Talent Manager at IBM Security. “By providing scholarships at conferences like this, IBM hopes that more women will be encouraged to attend the event and stay up to speed on the latest trends and techniques which will help them become even more successful in the field."

The theme for Hacker Halted 2017 is the “The Art of Cyberwar: Lessons from Sun Tzu.” 2,500 years ago, Sun Tzu wrote 13 chapters on military strategy. Fast forward to today and we are still learning from those chapters and applying them in our newfound digital age. In an age where war is waged over cables and microchips instead of battlefields, one challenge is defining what war is and when war should be declared. The conference presentations will address cyber security issues from the perspective that like it or not, our global society is engaged in a constant and ever growing cyber war.

Hacker Halted’s agenda showcases several prominent women of cyber including Georgia Weidman, Shevirah founder and CTO; Dr. Catherine J. Ullman, Senior Information Security Analyst, University at Buffalo; and Laura Samsó Pericón, Executive Vice President, Centurion Technologies Consulting LLC.

Women who wish to register for Hacker Halted under the IBM scholarship should visit https://www.hackerhalted.com/registration/ and use registration code HH17IBM for free entry.