It’s almost the last week in October, and before the month-long National Cybersecurity Awareness campaign ends, we thought we’d look at some of what we’ve learned and people who are making a difference. This year’s overarching message: Own IT. Secure IT. Protect IT. is focused on key areas including citizen privacy, consumer devices, and e-commerce security.
Now in its 16th year, National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM) is a collaborative effort between government and industry to ensure that all Americans have the resources they need to be safer and more secure online. The NCSAM 2019 Toolkit can help promote positive, lasting cybersecurity habits for Life. Not Just For October.
Last year, Cybersecurity Ventures bestowed its first annual award on Sylvia Acevedo, the CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA). She was named its 2018 Cybersecurity Person Of The Year.
“Sylvia Acevedo is a catalyst for the most important initiative in the cybersecurity industry over the past year,” said Steve Morgan, founder, and Editor-In-Chief at Cybersecurity Ventures. “She has a vision and passion for teaching STEM and cybersecurity skills to a huge corps of young girls, many of whom will become our world’s future cyber-fighters.”
With Cybersecurity jobs expected to grow exponentially by 2021, up from 1 million in 2014, the Girl Scouts have the potential to produce more future cybersecurity students and workers than any other organization globally. Recently, the Girl Scouts added new badges in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and the outdoors focusing on cybersecurity, space science, and coding.
“Bringing cybersecurity programming to Girl Scouts has been a passion project of mine for the past two years, and I’m thrilled with the impact we are making with partners like Palo Alto Networks and Raytheon,” said Sylvia Acevedo. “When Girl Scouts surveyed girls about the STEM skills they wanted to learn, ‘cybersecurity/white-hat hacking’ appeared high on the list. Because girls want to know how to protect themselves online, how to protect their homes and families, how to combat cyber bullying. Our programming gives them the tools they need to do all of this—and ensures American competitiveness in the cybersecurity arena.”
A systems engineer by education, she has worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she was involved in Voyager 2’s flyby of Jupiter in 1979. She has also worked as an executive at Apple, Dell, and Autodesk.
Acevedo was born near Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota. As a young child, her family moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico. She was active in her own local Brownie troop as a child, where she was encouraged to pursue her scientific interests in school, despite receiving discouragement from the school’s faculty. In 1979 she earned a bachelor’s degree from New Mexico State University studying industrial engineering, and would later go on to attend Stanford University, becoming one of the first Hispanic students to earn a Masters of Science at the school – in systems engineering.
Cybersecurity Ventures is a leading researcher for the global cyber economy, and source for cybersecurity facts, figures, and statistics.
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