100 Women in 100 Days Cybersecurity Career Accelerator announces next class

SACRAMENTO, Calif.—The free cybersecurity training and accreditation program, 100 Women in 100 Days (100w100d), founded and managed by Sacramento-based cyber risk consulting firm, Inteligenca, will help another 100 students reboot their careers at Japan's Saya University.

“The opportunity with Saya shows that people around the world recognize the need to get more women into the cybersecurity field,” Inteligenca CEO Carmen Marsh said in the announcement. “We are witnessing a movement when creating opportunity for women in security stopped being a local or national phenomenon, but truly became a worldwide movement.”

Saya University is a KV Equity Partners company founded by Jonathan Hiroshi Rossi and Crystal Lopez to expand multi-lingual cybersecurity awareness and training at scale.

“Partnering with Marsh is about inspiring our global communities to act boldly, particularly in Japan, where business leaders and entrepreneurs are in a privilege vantage to truly make a difference,” Lopez and Rossi explained. “We believe a diverse cybersecurity workforce leads to enhanced security for all.”

According to Cyberseek, a site developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to track workforce opportunities in the U.S., in October 2019, �there were 715,715 employed cybersecurity workers in the U.S., but 313,735 positions were open. Cyberseek described the supply of cybersecurity workers as “very low.”

“Japan is the third largest economy in the work and the deep lack of cybersecurity awareness, coupled with the serious shortage of talent emboldens Saya to achieve two inter-related goals: enhance cybersecurity literacy for all 126 million people in Japan and develop a diverse pipeline of cybersecurity professionals,” Marsh said. “Initiating this program will invigorate the business community to take action, and we hope the greater business community in Japan will see our first step as a rallying call to act now.”

100w100d plans for aggressive expansion in the coming year. There have been conversations about starting up classes in Seattle, Chicago, Las Vegas and Chile, and Marsh is working on new touches within the program itself, including the use of AI-based online gaming software as part of the curriculum.

Additionally, Marsh works with local employers including Intel, Centene, Sutter Health, PCCI and others to place students into internships, apprenticeships and full-time positions. She noted that some of the world's largest companies — AIG, Apple, Cloudflare, Duke Energy, Facebook, Google, IMB, Johnson & Johnson, Northrop Grumman, Symantec, Unisys, Verizon and PwC — recently signed an Aspen Institute agreement committed to building a strong cybersecurity workforce pipeline.

“It's great to see that companies are open to hiring workers who don't look like the cybersecurity workers they've had in the past,” said Marsh. “But, we're a long way away from having enough people to fill those spots. 100 women is a good start, but it's a drop in a bucket and we need to make it rain � hard!”