This year has been challenging to say the least, but it is not lost on us how fortunate we are to be able to continue working and running events, albeit remotely. In fact, October was an especially busy month for us at Eskenzi! Along with clients doing their own webinars, blogs and events for us to promote, we also ran quite a few ourselves – namely, the Security Serious Unsung Heroes Awards 2020, Most Inspiring Women in Cyber with the IT Security Guru and Security Serious Week: Action Against Disinformation. Having the opportunity to bring so many people together virtually in this way, has truly been a pleasure.
First, the Unsung Heroes Awards, sponsored by KnowBe4, Protiviti and Qualys, gave us the chance to honour some amazing people in the cybersecurity industry, drink some cocktails provided by Stir Crazy and learn about how the winners have been contributing to the industry. From Lisa Forte, Dr Jessica Barker, FC and all at Red Goat Cyber Security as well as Cygenta, helping healthcare organisations with their CV19 initiative, to the reigning Godmother of Security, the incredible Pat Ryan, who has paved the way for females entering the industry with Cyber Girls First“.
Speaking of women, the IT Security Guru’s Most Inspiring Women in Cyber event, sponsored by BT, Kaspersky, BAE Systems, KnowBe4 and (ISC)², took place on the eve of the 28th October giving each of the 26 winners a chance to provide a short video on their contributions to industry. It also included a panel discussion entitled “I don’t want to be recognised as a woman in cyber, but as a person in cyber.” The worthwhile debate delved into how the six panellists felt about being singled out as a woman in cybersecurity – is it unnecessary or is it a “necessary evil” to get more young women involved, with role models to look up to…? The consensus, for now, seemed to be the latter.
Security Serious Week: Action Against Disinformation campaign
Finally, the last week in October featured our Security Serious Week: Action Against Disinformation campaign. We smashed our target of reaching 500k people, with 600k+ and counting – through hosting an entire week filled with webinars, a Tweet Chat, a quiz and plenty of resources for downloading, watching and reading! It started as an idea for us to take a break from the normal everyday grind of PR to really get stuck into a campaign that gets people thinking about disinformation and being careful about how they source their information. This is particularly important with the US election this week and all the “news” making the rounds about COVID-19.
We were delighted with how many people stepped up to donate their time to this cause, including Prof Danny Dresner, Rosa Smothers, Jenny Radcliffe, Chad Anderson, Tony Morbin, Madeline Howard, Eoin Keary, Javvad Malik, Neira Jones, Theresa Lanowitz, Jon Garside, Tim Helming, Niamh Muldoon, Raj Samani, Graham Cluley, Dr Kris Erickson and many more. AT&T Cybersecurity even gave me a guest spot on its blog!
The webinars on ‘Manipulation by Disinformation: How Elections Can Be Swayed’ and how disinformation can be used to defraud you are still available to watch here: https://www.eskenzipr.com/security-serious-week/, along with a whole host of other resources including videos, blogs, useful fact-checking websites and a guide for teachers and parents on how to spot fake news.
It’s fair to say it has been an incredible month and certainly one to smile about despite all that’s going on in the world right now – we all need the little wins!
