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News | Oct. 9, 2018

Cybersecurity + Diversity: We want to see you in San Antonio!

Innovation drives the success of our cybersecurity mission at NSA, and the diversity of NSA's workforce fosters that innovation through ideas and contributions of individuals from different backgrounds. This is why for the past four years, the NSA's Hispanic/Latino Employee Resource Group (HLAT ERG) has maintained a strong relationship with the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS). NSA and SACNAS are working toward a mutual goal: to present employment and developmental opportunities to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) students and professionals from underrepresented communities.

This year, SACNAS is hosting their 2018 SACNAS National Diversity in STEM Conference on October 11-13 in San Antonio, TX. During the conference, NSA will lead multiple events in partnership with U.S. Intelligence Community agencies and will provide attendees the opportunity to learn more about NSA's mission.

Most notably, on October 13th 2018 from 2:00pm to 6:00pm, NSA will host the SecureSTEM: Cybersecurity Symposia and Expo which is open to the public and free of charge. Register at http://bit.ly/SecureSTEM. Events will include:

  • a cybersecurity technical panel
  • the NSA Cyber Challenge
  • live cybersecurity demonstrations
  • interactive cyber-related challenges for high school students

NSA is committed to the community and looks forward to engaging with you during the 2018 SACNAS Conference. Come and meet NSA's workforce and learn about the exciting field of cybersecurity and how you can have a role in it!


SACNAS 2018 SecureSTEM: Cyber Security Symposia & Expo, NSA Cyber Challenge - get hands on experience implementing decryption methods. Anyone interested in cybersecurity, cryptography and/or programming is encouraged to attend!

Work through an easy-to-follow tutorial to learn skills necessary to break real ciphers! The challenge will be performed in a Jupyter Notebook using Python 3. Participants are required to bring their laptops to participate. Please make sure your laptop has Jupyter installed prior to the event by downloading and installing the latest version of Anaconda for Python 3.

Space is limited to the first 100 participants. The Cyber Challenge will be uploaded to https://github.com/nsacyber before the Cyber Challenge begins.

Looking for more information on cybersecurity?  Check out NSA’s cybersecurity page, and StopThinkConnect.org.