The Bursary had a very good year in 2023 awarding two places at COSAC Ireland, one place on a SABSA Foundation course and one place at COSAC APAC to be held in late February.  Through this program four young women have been provided with opportunities to broaden their knowledge skills and networks within the Cyber Security industry helping us to build greater diversity in the future.

These programs have been funded through generous donations made by our supporters, many of whom are COSAC attendees, SABSA Course alumni or both. We are very grateful for their ongoing support.

We have been able to raise sufficient funds in 2023 to fully support a similar program of awards in 2024 so we expect to see new bursary recipients at both COSAC and COSAC APAC as well as on SABSA Training in the coming year.

We were also very impressed that one of our first Bursary recipients at COSAC 2022, Ghariba Bourhidane, returned to COSAC 2023 as a presenter helping to build our vision of sustained diversity.

The 2023 recipients who attended COSAC 2023 provided great feedback (see separate news item) and we hope to ensure providing similar experiences in the future.

Going forward the key dates for 2024 are:

Bursary applications will open on Monday 6 May 2024; and

Bursary applications will close on Friday 31 May 2024 (the closing date – Midnight BST)

Please let any prospective nominees know that they can apply here.

And, as always, if you wish to make donations, please use the following link DONATE

We will be seeking corporate sponsorship in 2024 to make the Bursary more sustainable so if you have any thoughts, please email me at [email protected]

Regards

Michael Hirschfeld

Chair, The SABSA Founders Bursary