Approximately a quarter of our usd Heroes are female. Even though that is above the average for our industry, we are convinced that there is still room for improvement. That is why we are taking part in Girls'Day again this year. On this day, girls can gain an insight into professions that are traditionally predominantly carried out by men.
Our colleague Julia Wingert from the Security Audits & PCI team has organized Girls'Day for the third time in a row, this year together with her team mate Lea Straumann, Dominique Dittert from usd HeroLab and Victoria Kunde from the Security Consulting team. We asked Julia what the participants can look forward to and what makes Girls' Days so special to her.
Julia, what can the participants expect this year?
JW: We want to introduce the girls to various IT security topics in an informal way. To this end, we have prepared individual workstations with interactive tasks and games, for example on cryptography, password security and social engineering. My colleague Dominique Dittert from usd HeroLab will also be conducting a live hack. We want to show the participants how easy it is to carry out phishing attacks via text message, for example, or what security risks are harbored by unknown WLAN hotspots.
What are you particularly looking forward to?
JW: I'm always really excited to get to learn about the girls' current level of knowledge. I notice that the technical affinity among the girls grows with each year and that they already know a lot about many topics, such as data protection. They know, for example, not to post certain information on social media or share their passwords. In general, young girls today are much more apt than we were at that age (laughs). Nevertheless, there is still a certain, noticeable reluctance when it comes to actually taking up a technical profession.
Why do you think that is?
JW: One of the reasons is certainly that girls still have certain prejudices about what kind of people "fit" into technical or scientific professions. We are happy to break down those prejudices - because we work with a wide variety of people with very different characteristics, interests and strengths. And none of us fit into any "box". Our aim is to offer girls realistic insights into our industry, with all its advantages and disadvantages - but without any prejudices. If we can inspire enthusiasm but also help them to make well-informed decisions, we are more than happy.
