ShaktiCon 2021, a women-only international eConference on cybersecurity organised by the Coimbatore-based Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, a deemed university and one of India's leading multi-campus, multi-disciplinary teaching and research institutions, drew over 3,000 cybersecurity students and professionals from 16 countries across seven continents.
The conference organized by Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham’s Team is a free and annually hosted programme that aims at inspiring, training, and upskilling women in cybersecurity.
Twenty-five foreign speakers and experts gave talks and presentations over the course of the three-day conference. Cryptography, Bluetooth protection, 4G & 5G security on drones, Machine Learning for cybersecurity, threat modeling, cyber crimes, fuzzing, and cyber warfare were among the main topics discussed during the panel discussions and live interactions.
The winners of a women-only Capture the Flag (CTF) cybersecurity competition, held earlier this month, were presented with prizes at ShakiCon 2021. Contestants who took part in CTF faced challenges in the fields of cryptography, reversing, forensics, Pwn, and network manipulation.
“Cybersecurity remains a male-dominated industry, where women account only for 11% of the jobs. Though nearly half of computer users are women, they are not adequately represented in the cybersecurity space. But cybersecurity offers a viable career path for women. In this context, we are glad to organiseShaktiCon as an exclusive platform for women researchers and hackers from around the world to gain skills and help fix the gender gap in cybersecurity. We believe that conferences like ShaktiCon play an important role in advancing the leadership and professional development of women in cybersecurity. The presentations of experts participating in the conference highlighted the growing opportunities for women in cybersecurity and created awareness about the next generation of offensive and defensive security technologies, among the women participants,” says, Dr. P Venkat Rangan, Vice-Chancellor, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham.
Among the main speakers who participated in the event included MsRinki Seth, VP & Chief Information Security Officer, Twitter Inc, Ms. Rama Vedashree, CEO, Data Security Council of India, a premier industry body on cybersecurity and data protection in India, Ms. Marion Marschalek, founder, Black hoodie, an organisation that conducts women-only reverse engineering boot camps and conferences, and Ms. Neeta Verma, Director General of National Informatics Centre, a premier technology organization of the Government of India.
The speakers emphasised the numerous job opportunities available to women in cybersecurity, as well as the need for more women to join the sector. Basic forms of cyber defense, security architecture, modules, and models, the functioning of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and its role in securing modern devices, basic cryptography, quantum cryptography, quantum key distribution, and hardware and software approaches to quantum cryptography were among the topics discussed in the sessions.
Drones and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles were the focus of a session that covered 4G and 5G security, data mining systems, anomaly detection in drones, protocols, and robots used to monitor drones, and the security implications. Machine Learning for Defense, Threat Modeling, Safe Software Development Lifecycle, and Malware Forensics were among the topics discussed at the conference.
In 2013, women held 11% of all information security positions worldwide. Women currently account for nearly a quarter of the cybersecurity workforce. This change in the industry brings new insights and experiences. However, with men outnumbering women three to one, there is plenty of space for improvement.
