Ossining Girls Learn about Cybersecurity, STEM Careers

Anne M. Dorner Middle School girls held their cell phones in one hand and wrote down details of Ariana Grande’s life with their other hand. They found all kinds of information, from the singer’s height and weight to her cat allergy and home address.

The seventh- and eighth-graders were following directions from IBM designers and engineers at the company’s Cyber Day for Girls at Pace University March 28.

“All these little pieces of information can be put together … and can be used against you,” said Alexa Piccoli, an IBM security services consultant.

Thirty-five sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders from Ossining joined girls from around the region to learn about cybersecurity and how to protect themselves online. They also met IBM designers and engineers, discussed career opportunities in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math), and toured Pace’s Pleasantville campus.

IBM has been hosting IBMCyberDay4Girls events since 2016 to educate middle school students about cybersecurity. The company sponsors the workshops in the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa and Nigeria.

Other presenters showed the girls websites on a screen and asked them to guess which ones were real and which were attempts to trick people into providing sensitive data, known as phishing.

The girls played an IBM password security game in which they teamed up to create a password they thought could stump the company’s supercomputer. The experts recommended not using any word in a password that appears in a dictionary and, of course, should not include their birthday or parts of their Social Security number. Still, some of the teams’ passwords got hacked.

“I didn’t know that there was an application that could hack your password, so I was really surprised at that,” said Linda Zhinin, an AMD seventh-grader.

The speakers also discussed password managers, ad blockers and the importance of two-factor authentication for cybersecurity. They reminded the girls that what they post on the internet is there forever. During one presentation, IBM engineer and master inventor Mike Spisak showed the girls how he could disable a drone by hacking into it.

Zoey Jowers, who is in seventh grade, said it’s great that so many girls are interested in STEM and technology.

“It’s nice to see that people of all genders and races are involved in technology,” she said. “It’s universal. Technology is something that happens globally.”

Seventh-grader Ella Castrillon, who was at Cyber Day for Girls with her twin sister, Lola, said she appreciated the opportunity to learn more about potential jobs and careers in tech. “They need more women in this field,” she said.