onShore Security’s Caron Grantham attended the WiCyS conference recently. We asked her to reflect on her experience:
” I was enthusiastic about attending the fifth annual WiCyS (Women In Cybersecurity) 2018 Conference that took place in Chicago on March 23rd through the 24th.
The conference environment was very well organized and attended by hundreds of women. While the majority of the participants were undergrad or graduate students seeking to break into the broad field of cybersecurity, there were several working professionals like myself in attendance.
The conference days provided a whirlwind activities that included informational workshops, lightning tech talks, practical labs, a poster contest, as well as a career fair, and prominent keynote speakers featured during the breakfast, lunch and dinner hours.
The highlights of the conference for me included being able to network with other professionals to learn of their varied experiences within the space, as well as what path led eventually them into cybersecurity. It was enlightening to find out out that some C-level professionals came from liberal arts majors or had military backgrounds. I was also able to interact with younger ladies to give mentoring advice based upon my own experiences in working cybersecurity.
The activities that provided the most value for me as a professional were the practical labs focused on forensics, threat hunting, and incident response, in addition to learning the basics of compiling intelligence data into usable information for deeper investigation or trend analysis.
These talks were presented by capable researchers and analysts with current and former work experiences with the Department of Defense, the NSA, FBI, DHS, NIST, and enterprises such as Symantec, Raytheon, Cisco, Twitter and Facebook. Men were also welcome to the conference as both supporters, advocates and keynote speakers. In fact, one keynote address was paneled by males in senior and director roles, for which the subject focused on men as allies and partnering to advance women in cybersecurity.
Overall, my attendance at this exceptional conference event was very exciting and educational and I’m very grateful that our leadshership at onShore felt that it was important to sponsor my presence at WiCyS 2018″