{"id":6430,"date":"2019-01-17T08:46:33","date_gmt":"2019-01-17T08:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/gchq-sets-up-all-female-cyber-training-classes\/"},"modified":"2019-01-17T08:46:33","modified_gmt":"2019-01-17T08:46:33","slug":"gchq-sets-up-all-female-cyber-training-classes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/gchq-sets-up-all-female-cyber-training-classes\/","title":{"rendered":"GCHQ sets up all-female cyber-training classes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"CyberImage copyright<\/span>
\n Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n

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All-female classes in cyber-skills are being set up by the GCHQ intelligence service, in an attempt to recruit a wider range of online security experts.<\/p>\n

Almost 90% of the cyber-skills workforce worldwide is male, says GCHQ’s cyber-defence arm, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).<\/p>\n

With warnings of serious skills shortages, the security services are worried about missing female recruits.<\/p>\n

Chris Ensor of the NCSC says it needs to “address the imbalance”.<\/p>\n

There will be 600 free places on all-female CyberFirst Defenders courses in April and May this year, run as a mix of residential and non-residential training events.<\/p>\n

The venues for the four-day courses will include Nottingham, Lancaster, Wrexham, Edinburgh and Oxfordshire.<\/p>\n

Cyber-girls<\/h2>\n

The intention is to make cyber-skills lessons more open to teenage girls, in a field which has been accused of having a very male image, whether it is James Bond-style stereotypes or stock photos of teenage boys in hoodies.<\/p>\n

All-female classes have been used in some schools as a way of building confidence in subjects once seen as being more male-dominated.<\/p>\n

Aisling Brown, curriculum leader at the Stephen Perse Foundation school in Cambridge, said that teaching boys and girls separately in computing can help them with different ways of learning.<\/p>\n

In computing classes, she said: “Girls are sometimes more reflective and take time to volunteer answers, while boys can tend to rush.”<\/p>\n

The school’s computing club could tend to become dominated by the boys, she said, and they had to find ways to make it more accessible to girls.<\/p>\n

It follows the CyberFirst Girls competition,<\/a> launched last month, and run by the NCSC to promote computer skills and careers in cyber-security.<\/p>\n

The agency wants more teenage girls to get involved, with questions designed to build skills in cryptography, cyber-security, logic and coding and networking.<\/p>\n

It is part of a wider CyberFirst project aimed at raising cyber-skills in young people up to the age of 18.<\/p>\n

The security services, needing talented staff to tackle the growing threat of cyber-attacks, have been concerned about recruiting from too small a pool of people with computer skills.<\/p>\n

The lack of women in cyber-security is part of the bigger picture of women in science, technology, engineering and maths, says the NCSC.<\/p>\n

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Image copyright<\/span>
\n NCSC<\/span><\/p>\n

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Image caption<\/span>
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\n Pupils at the Tauheedul Islam Girls’ High School in Blackburn have been taking part in the cyber competition
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The agency says about 35% of its overall staff are female and half of its senior leadership.<\/p>\n

As well as wanting a better gender balance, the NCSC wants to attract applicants from a wider range of social backgrounds, from state as well as independent schools.<\/p>\n

‘Inquisitive instincts’<\/h2>\n

Among the schools taking part in the competition is the Tauheedul Islam Girls’ High School, a Muslim state school in Blackburn which is among the highest-performing secondary schools in the country.<\/p>\n

“Women are very under-represented in the global cyber-industry,” said assistant principal, Asia Ali, who says she wants “exceptionally talented girls” to help make the country safer online.<\/p>\n

The NCSC has warned of the scale of wide-ranging cyber-threats.<\/p>\n

Already this month, the NCSC has highlighted threats to hack smart TV devices, cyber-attacks on information about German politicians and the theft of insurance and legal documents relating to the 9\/11 attacks.<\/p>\n

Mr Ensor, the agency’s deputy director for skills and growth, said increasing numbers have been taking part in their training courses.<\/p>\n

“However, women only make up a small proportion of the global cyber-workforce, and throughout GCHQ and the NCSC we are looking to address the imbalance.”<\/p>\n

He said he wanted to appeal to the “inquisitive instincts of young people”.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Image copyright Getty Images All-female classes in cyber-skills are being set up by the GCHQ intelligence service, in an attempt to recruit a wider range of online security experts. Almost 90% of the cyber-skills workforce worldwide is male, says GCHQ’s cyber-defence arm, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). With warnings of serious skills shortages, the … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6431,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}