Introduction and Event Details
Wassup fellow techies! I’m back to purvey you with a summary report of the Cybersecurity Starter Event that took place at Strathmore University on Saturday April 15th, 2023. This event was held and sponsored by GDSC or Google Student Developers Club for Strathmore University, it took place in Strathmore’s own Microsoft Auditorium.
This was an open event that students, any GDSC Member or Non-GDSC Member that is interested in cybersecurity could’ve attended. Students were many in attendance, not only from Strathmore University but also from KCA, JKUAT, TUK, Kabarak and more.
Now to the event’s featured guest speakers: Dr Bright Gameli, Clinton Otieno and Judy Ngure; These 3 field experts took us through the jobs in cybersecurity, platforms for certification, myths in cybersecurity and the state of cybersecurity now with artificial intelligence involvement in day-to-day tasks in a panel discussion hosted by the moderator Emmanuel Muturia.
Panel Discussion Session
Dr Bright Gameli was the first guest speaker to introduce himself to the audience. Gameli, the cybersecurity engineer and founder of AfricaHackon emphasized the importance of roles in cybersecurity such as sales, research and policy review.
“You’ll never be a technical person forever”, a quote from Dr. Gameli where he explained that as you rise the ranks in the area of cybersecurity you'll deal with less technical work and or even become a salesperson.
When it came to the topic of the state of cybersecurity with artificial intelligence, Gameli stated that AI has changed the game. The process of identifying if someone has hacked a network is now less time consuming, IP Addresses can be scanned and enable performing bash scripts for ethical hacking in Linux.
Clinton Otieno was the second guest speaker to introduce himself to the audience. Clinton is an IT Specialist and Cybersecurity Analyst, who currently works at Strathmore University as an IT assistant.
He discussed how hacking his university’s school network led him to gain an interest in cybersecurity and pursue a career in it. When it came to the discussion of cybersecurity roles, he told us about an Active Directory Analyst.
Active Directory (AD) is a Microsoft Windows directory service that allows IT administrators to manage users, applications, data, and various other aspects of their organization’s network.
Judy Ngure, our last guest speaker is a current cybersecurity consultant and VP of Data and Information Security of the company Africa’s Talking. On the topic of cybersecurity roles, she discussed SOAR or Security orchestration, automation and response in full, calling it a playbook that replaces the person in charge or preventing and responding to a cyberattack.
Training Employees to learn cybersecurity is another important role in cybersecurity Judy discussed, pinpointing how lucrative it is. A company can hire a cybersecurity expert to come and train their employees in their security department. Let’s say that the company’s security department consists of 5 employees, the cybersecurity expert can charge Ksh 50,000 per employee which would lead to a payment of Ksh 250,000 for his/her services.
Takeaways from the event
There were 3 big takeaways that I personally took from this event. “Do as many certifications as possible and get the free ones as much as possible.” “Find your career objective”, said Dr Gameli when emphasizing on the importance of certifications. He recommended Pentest Academy, Cybrary, HacktheBox and HackMe as exemplary platforms to learn cybersecurity.
Secondly, “Character is just as important as skill set”. Good character is a vital trait to have in any job, cybersecurity jobs included. You’ll have tasks in which you’ll have to or need to collaborate with co-workers or even assist your peers in problem-solving cyberattacks that they are dealing with.
Thirdly,” Once you get big enough, trade money for money or time for more money.”. This comment made by Judy fascinated me because it gave me and others in the audience a wise strategy to not only increase your salary in the area of cybersecurity but also your level of expertise.
Lastly, the myths in cybersecurity. There were three in total, though one of them took the cake for me. We had a Q&A session where a student in the audience asked if it’s true that people in cybersecurity wear black hoodies in a dark room.
The guest speakers all validated this point by stating that they have worn a hoodie at some point when doing their cybersecurity work in a terminal on their laptops.
The other two were: “You’ll be a technical person forever” and that a Cybersecurity person’s salary is in dollars. The second myth about being a technical person is actually false. In the panel discussion section of this article, I quoted Dr Gameli’s response to that myth. When it comes to salaries for people in cybersecurity, they can be paid in either dollars or Kenyan Shillings.
Conclusion
That’s a wrap for my report on April 15th’s Cybersecurity Starter Event at Strathmore. Shoutout to Jaden my fellow Co-Founder at Giz Munch for the heads up about this event.
Feel free to drop questions you may have pertaining to this event in the comment section. Thanks for taking the time to go through this article. Hope you enjoyed it! Until the next article stay safe and munch tech.
