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Cybersecurity Scholarship Program

Posted by Amit Pandya

Cybersecurity is an ever-changing industry today because of IoT, where we learn something new every day with an awesome community of collaborators. I would like to share my experience on getting a place on the ‘Cisco Global Cybersecurity Scholarship’ after a 6 months wait. Life always feels good when your hard work pays off and shapes your goal. To help close the security skills gap, Cisco introduced the Global Cybersecurity Scholarship programme in 2016. Cisco has invested $10 million in this programme to increase the pool of talent with critical Cybersecurity proficiency. I am honoured to be a part of this programme and to be one of the carefully selected 2000 candidates from all over the world out of thousands of applicants.

I heard about the Scholarship through social media and it intrigued me to see how far I could improve my knowledge and portfolio in the internet security world. I applied towards end of last year and 5 months later Cisco Systems emailed me with hope saying ‘I met the requirement to progress further with the application’ and invited me to attend phase-1 & phase-2 of this process, which involved going through a number of questions and a highly competitive technical exam. I needed 75% to be accepted and I excelled with 84%. A few days later Cisco congratulated me on being accepted for the programme and now my exciting journey into Cybersecurity begins in July. Cisco are going to sponsor me throughout for all training, mentoring and coaching including study guides and follow up exams through their very talented resources. Knowing that this is the final one has made me even more determined.

Working at The Bunker as a Network Consultant for the last 10 months has given me an incredible platform and the goal to strive for excellence in security as The Bunker as a business values its client and their security above anything else and they are the leaders in Cybersecurity as part of the Cyberfort Group. The Bunker and my fantastic team has kindly offered to support me in every way possible throughout this scholarship, which I cannot thank enough and I am very humbled.

I am really excited and looking forward to my scholarship programme to further develop my skills in Cybersecurity. More updates to follow in future so watch this space – See you people in Cohort 7