Microsoft pledges support for women in cybersecurity

Microsoft through the Cloud and AI Security Engineering team has reiterated its commitment to advocate for women with an interest in security engineering through the SheHacks annual HackFest Festival.

The pronouncement, made during this year’s annual HackFest held at Strathmore Business School, underscores the organisation’s commitment to supporting developing, sponsoring and advocating for women with an interest in Security Engineering.

Speaking during the event, Hayden Hainsworth, General Manager for Cybersecurity Engineering at Microsoft highlighted the importance of such strategic partnerships and events in developing competency in tackling cyber threats in a rapidly evolving tech ecosystem.

“My mission is geared towards empowering our customers and partners to get and stay secure on their journey to cloud while inspiring the next generation of cybersecurity engineers,” he said. Adding; “We are really delighted to be partnering with SheHacks for this year’s Hackathon, with a focus to prepare women to thrive in the technology industry. We want to make it easy for anyone to take their next step forward in technology.”

The SheHacks Founders Evelyn Kilel and Laura Tich emphasized the need for increased support towards youth in Kenya. “Since we founded this initiative, we have seen tremendous growth in the number of women and young people who want to take part. This year alone, we are hosting close to 300 young ladies from Kenya to equip and empower them with the required technical know-how to combat cyber-crime”, they said.

In conclusion, Pratik Roy Modern Workplace and Security Business Group Lead for Microsoft in North, West, East, Southern Africa, Levant & Pakistan noted Kenya has one of the highest number of internet users with over 46 million people having access to the service, according to internet world statistics. But with the acceleration of digitalisation comes insecure consumer habits.

This coupled with inadequate cybersecurity measures in key sectors and eventually turning Kenya into a lucrative target for cyber criminals. Our collaboration with SheHacks provides a great opportunity to empower more youth with the right skills – most urgent cybersecurity skills to accelerate digital success in the region.