The heroes of AusCERT2020

The story is now all too familiar; for millions of working women, the Covid-19 pandemic delivered the tough challenge of keeping up with the tasks of home-life as well as shouldering various responsibilities at the office.

For the women of AusCERT and its supporting networks, things were no different.

In late April last year, the call was made to pivot the annual AusCERT conference into a virtual-only event.

The challenge was a completely new frontier for the team and this is the story behind how women in security made AusCERT2020 - whose theme was serendipitously en-pointe “We Can be Heroes” - happen.

For the very first time in its 19-year history, AusCERT featured the work of 2 female keynotes. Kana Shinoda and Julie Inman-Grant are heroes in their own right.

Known as the “mother of hackers” in her home country of Japan, Kana Shinoda told her story of how she'd successfully established Code Blue, widely known as a pioneering hacker conference in Japan.

Code Blue continues to establish itself as a well respected information security conference in the APAC region; one that connects friends and colleagues across borders.

Julie Inman-Grant, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, spoke on the topic of “Online Safety during & after Covid-19”, the work that she does within the eSafety portfolio helps keep Australians safe in the online world that we live in today.

Not only did the conference feature 2 female keynotes, 2 of the 3 winners of its annual Information Security Awards categories were female.

Folks in the Australian cyber and information security community will be well and truly familiar with Michelle Price, CEO of AustCyber. Michelle has been a tireless champion of the sector since her appointment at AustCyber in 2017. At AusCERT2020, Michelle’s contribution was recognised through her award as the Information Security Excellence winner.

The other deserving award recipient was Rachael Leighton. Her work as Principal Advisor, Cyber Strategy & Awareness at the Department of Premier and Cabinet for the Victorian Government was recognised through the honour of being awarded the AusCERT Member Individual of the Year.

Both women continued to make significant contributions to their workplace despite the challenges that Covid-19 brought them and emphasized the importance of collaboration in the cyber and information security sector - the community needs to work together to make things happen!

In addition to the above, AusCERT2020 also featured a number of female speakers on its program.

Topics delivered ranged from combating cybercrime, the analysis and reverse engineering of exploits to the application of machine learning in cyber awareness training programs.

The women who spoke and presented at the conference were diverse in their range of information security expertise and each brought a unique perspective to the table and shared it with the 1000+ delegates that attended the conference last year.

Last but not least, the AusCERT2020 conference team was led by 2 women who were able to rise to the occasion and corralled over 30 sponsor exhibitors, close to 80 remote presenters and a myriad of delivery partners over months of hard work.

Bek Cheb, the AusCERT Business Manager was able to bring her business acumen and decade-long conference management experience to the table alongside Laura Jiew, AusCERT’s Events and Marketing Communications coordinator who drew on her communications and project management skills to ensure that the conference was able to go ahead as planned.

In the end, the conference was delivered across 4 days and 5 streams from the premises of 2 production studios which eventuated in over 80 hours of viewing material.

Delegates were overall very happy and impressed with their conference experience in a year that was filled with challenges and uncertainties.

While we know that women have been especially affected by the Covid-19 pandemic through employment cutbacks in service-related sectors, their caregiving status and the constant demand from society to “juggle-it-all” - in the case of AusCERT2020, it’s evident that the force of women in security is one to be reckoned with.

In the words of the famous sociologist and historian W.E.B Du Bois - “there is no force equal to a woman determined to rise.”

This story was first published in the Women in Security magazine (Edition 1, 2021). To subscribe, please visit womeninsecuritymagazine.com