“The origin of this organization began in 2019 with Courtney Hassenfield, an alumnus of our school,” said Sankofa Benzo, a senior cybersecurity student and president of the organization.
Benzo said the organization “is essentially about giving professional and technical development to women and focusing on the marginalized gender in cybersecurity.”
She explained that the organization’s name could be misleading; the organization welcomes people of all genders, races and majors. “It is always nice to not just have the people that we are representing, but also have allies, we have done things such as resume workshops and interview skills for all different students,” said Benzo.
Other events that the organization have done include collaborations with the CDC and doing a facilitation and advocacy workshop with the MIT center. They have also done a CTF competition, similar to Jeopardy, while discussing well-known cybersecurity topics such as cryptographs, forensics, open-source intelligence and other topics. “It’s all-encompassing, but with our organization we like to take it step by step and we cater to what our members want to learn,” said Benzo.
“I will always ask what you want to do,” Benzo said, “please tell us [what you want] because we are here to serve you, we will always chime in with things that we [the seniors] have learned from internships and classes.”
When asked about the future, Benzo said that the organization wants to begin a Personal Branding Workshop, “in which we are already talking to the CDC about, as a collaboration.” The organization also plans to host a Cryptography Workshop on Dec. 1, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. “This will be with the Hacking Club and Boston Cybernetics Institute. It will be fun and signups for RSVP will be up soon,” said Benzo.
“Also, the month of October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, so we are thinking about tabling to advertise our organization sometime this month,” Benzo said. “We also plan to put flyers up advertising our club, as well as this newspaper article, to spread word about our program and what we are offering.”
“After some icebreakers, we then get to a brief presentation on what we will be covering that day, whether that be Wireshark and how the exploit works, trajectories of certain attacks and other topics,” said Benzo. Benzo also dove into the hands-on experience of the weekly meeting, explaining how each one has some interactive portion that takes up much of the allotted time.
“Join our organization, you do not have to be a genius, everyone was a beginner at some point, no need to feel as if you are not qualified to join,” Benzo said.
For more information, follow the organization on Instagram page at wicys_unewhaven.
