Inclusive Cyber
About Inclusive Cyber:
Launched in 2018, Inclusive Cyber is a global initiative mobilising atypical and underrepresented talent into the cyber security talent pipeline, through leveraging transferable skills from their existing studies. Our vision is to build a talent pipeline as diverse as the cybersecurity and technology challenges we face. The project was awarded as Canada’s Top 100 Recovery Projects in 2021, awarded as a Hero of Progress by HCL Tech at Davos 2024, and is shortlisted for PICCASO Canada's 2024 awards under the "Not for profilt leadership" category.
Following its debut at SHAPE NAC 2019, and thanks to inputs from Global Shaper hubs around the world, the Montréal hub developed a transferable skills toolkit based on NIST’s National Initiative for Cyber Education (NICE) framework, for students from 15 different backgrounds ranging from Fine Arts, Literature to Political Sciences.
From its grassroots beginnings in Canada, the project was then localised in Kigali and London. Over half a decade, we have run 27 workshops and directly coached 1315+ students in breaking into cybersecurity. These workshops took place at some of the largest universities’ Humanities and Arts faculties, including in Canada: McGill University, University of Toronto, Concordia University, University of Sherbrooke, UQAM; and in London: LSE, Queen Mary University of London, Royal Holloway, Hult Business School, and two years in a row at UCL. In Kigali, we built a net-new 6 week-long curriculum to equip young professionals with competitive cyber skills, supported by the ABSA Group, and recently in Oct 2023, hosted a cybersecurity awareness campaign with the National Cyber Security Authority.
In addition to working with students directly, the project is a key stakeholder representing the youth voice in policy development. In Canada, we participated in a consultation with the Canadian Centre for Cybersecurity on university curriculum build. In Montréal, the project was a founding project of CyberEco, Québec’s cybersecurity consortium of public and private sector stakeholders, and recently tabled at CyberEco's 2024 conference, the largest in the province. In Rwanda, the project was presented in partnership with the Rwandan National Cybersecurity Authority, and Rwanda’s Get Safe Online initiative. In the UK, the project consults with the UK Cyber Security Council, and provided data points from our workshops to its policy paper guiding UK’s cyber talent efforts. We are also represent the voice of the youth in the World Economic Forum’s Bridging Cyber Talent Gap initiative. In April 2024, the Forum published the Strategic Cybersecurity Talent framework, which guides public and private sectors in building and sustaining a skilled cyber workforce. Inclusive Cyber was featured as a successful use case.
How to get involved:
Inclusive Cyber is open for all Global Shapers hubs to join by organising a project that activates their local community around the topic of diversifying the cyber talent pipeline. We are currently building assets to help hubs get started in replicating the project, so please stay tuned. If you have questions, please get in touch with us through Toplink.
Some resources to learn more: