Women in cyberspace: Dad on a mission For this academic, the push to encourage more women into male-dominated fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) is personal. Professor Tanveer Zia’s motivation to create opportunities for women in cyber security began at home. Associate Head of the School of Computing and Mathematics, Tanveer is not only a renowned educator and advisor. He is also the father of three daughters. When he discovered the low number of women in cyber security roles in the United States while there on sabbatical, he began investigating the reasons. “I became curious as to why that was happening and found out that in Australia, we were also struggling to enrol women. In Australia, the participation of women in STEM overall is 20 per cent and in cyber security specifically it is 11 per cent. Then only one per cent of female cyber security workers are in senior management positions. To increase these staggeringly low rates, Tanveer secured nearly $250,000 in funding and developed the Girls in Cyber Security Awareness (GiCSA) program. Tanveer’s daughters Fatima, Zainab and Sarah played an integral role in developing the program, inspiring his mission, providing feedback around the dinner table, designing the logo and becoming ambassadors for the program at school. After Tanveer put the course together, contacting high schools across Charles Sturt University’s footprint and doing many media interviews to build momentum, word of the program started to spread.
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Kicking off in 2018, the program included a series of threeday cyber security awareness and training workshops in campus locations and participation in an online cyber security challenge. The top students also had the chance to participate in a leadership and entrepreneurship workshop and interact with successful women in cyber security, including Technical Director in Emerging Technology and Engineering with the Australian Cyber Security Centre Kylie McDevitt, information security expert Shanna Daly, and security architect with Microsoft Sarah Young. In total, 137 female students in Years 9 and 10 from across the country took part in the program, building their skills and their confidence in cyber security. Around two-thirds of participants indicated they want to go into cyber security when they finish high school.
“ More women in cyber security means the entire profession becomes even better at solving complex problems, meeting deadlines and coming up with solutions outside the box. The more diversity, the better.”
