Girls Who Code and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Launch Cybersecurity Awareness Month Campaign

New York, NY - (October 1, 2023) — This October, Girls Who Code and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) are collaborating for a Cybersecurity Awareness Month campaign spotlighting women and non-binary individuals working to change the face of cybersecurity and providing tips to help young women and girls stay safe online. This partnership is a continued effort to highlight the issue of disparity in cybersecurity while bringing awareness to the women and non-binary people spearheading the work.

This October and year-round, CISA and Girls Who Code are challenging everyone to help Secure Our World by adopting four simple steps that everyone can take to stay safe online:

• Use strong passwords that are long, random, and unique to each account, and use a password manager to generate them and save them.

• Turn on multifactor authentication on all accounts that offer it. We need more than a password on our most important accounts, like email, social media, and financial accounts.

• Recognize and report phishing; think before you click. Be cautious of unsolicited emails, texts, or calls asking you for personal information, and don't click on links or open attachments from unknown sources.

• Update software. Enable automatic updates on software so the latest security patches keep devices we are connected to continuously updated.

This collaboration is a social media campaign featuring women working in cybersecurity, including employees making waves at CISA. These women include:

• Adrienne Phoenix, IT Cybersecurity Specialist at CISA

• Ann Galchutt, Senior Advisor for Mitigation and Remediation at CISA

• Rachel Kelly, Deputy Chief, Cybersecurity Shared Services Office at CISA

• Laurie Lai, Senior Counsel for Cybersecurity at CISA

• Monsurat Ottun, IT Cybersecurity Specialist and Cybersecurity Advisor at CISA

• Janet Rathod, Global Head of Cyber Threat Intelligence at Citi

Learn more about these cybersecurity changemakers on our blog and social media platforms. For more information on CISA Careers and CISA Culture, please visit cisa.gov/careers and cisa.gov/cisa-culture.

About Girls Who Code

Girls Who Code is an international nonprofit organization working to close the gender gap in technology and leading the movement to inspire, educate, and equip students who identify as girls or nonbinary with the computing skills needed to pursue 21st-century opportunities. Since launching in 2012, Girls Who Code has served 580,000 students through in-person and virtual programming, and 185,000 of our alumni are college or career-aged.

Girls Who Code has sparked culture change through marketing campaigns and advocacy efforts, generating 14 billion engagements globally. In 2019, the organization was named the #1 Most Innovative Non-Profit on Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies list, and in 2023 was named one of NonProfit Times’ Best Nonprofits to Work For.

Follow the organization on social media @GirlsWhoCode.

About CISA

As the nation’s cyber defense agency and national coordinator for critical infrastructure security, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency leads the national effort to understand, manage, and reduce risk to the digital and physical infrastructure Americans rely on every hour of every day.

Visit CISA.gov for more information, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.