Scotland’s national innovation centre for internet of things technologies has launched an initiative to support greater diversity among people working in cyber security and IoT resilience.
CENSIS has partnered with audit, tax and advisory company Mazars to begin a pilot inviting a group of students from the National Cyber Security Centre’s CyberFirst programme to explore IoT security.
They will take part in an ethical hacking exercise using technology designed by CENSIS engineers to better understand the vulnerability of systems.
The organisation said it will bring together students from a diverse range of backgrounds and undergraduate disciplines and simulate real life IoT issues. The students will be asked to identify vulnerabilities and areas that can be strengthened against cyber threats.
Cade Wells, acting business development director at CENSIS, said: “Boosting diversity in cyber security is incredibly important as different paths into the sector inevitably bring a greater range of fresh ideas.
“Innovation is all about doing things differently and we need a range of perspectives to feed into that. Our focus on cyber security and resilience in IoT is designed to support, rather than stifle, future technology developments, and cyber security will only become more important as legislation changes.
“The kit we’ll be using for the new initiative was designed for teaching purposes and we hope the programme will be both fun and informative for the students.
“It will be interesting to see how the skills already gained through the internships at Mazars influence the results of the hacking exercise. We hope that this workshop will be the first of many to support the CyberFirst initiative and wider diversity agenda across the sector, reducing the barriers to entry for under-represented groups.”