1. What is the benefit of becoming a GOI-IES scholar to you (personally and professionally), to Ireland and your home country?
Growing up as a young girl, watching movies like Hackers, Leverage, Catch Me if You Can, Black hat and most recently Mr. Robot, I was able to see how vulnerable a person's life could be with just taps of the keyboard. Watching characters like Dade Murphy in Hackers and Alec Hardison in Leverage I was able to breach systems but nothing prepared me for the reality beyond the cameras.
I come from a Country called Nigeria where I have seen numerous cases of people being hacked and scammed either as a result of cyber vulnerability, data theft or ignorance. The consequences of this can sometimes be very dire ranging from hopelessness, suicide and even homelessness amongst others. And these occurrences keep increasing year after year while our reliance on the internet and internet penetration increases. Truthfully it wasn't until it happened to a relative of mine that I fully understood the toll such actions could take on a once vibrant person, thus I made it a goal to do my own part in making sure that I can keep the internet safe and secure for all to use. This sparked my interest in cyber security and hacking in general. Since then, I have aspired to become someone with the skill and ability to not only be able to hack but also protect and stop data theft and breaches. My aspiration was solidified when I watched a documentary where the United States of America (USA) in 2011 was able to use ethical hackers to find more missing people than the police through their digital footprints.
Unfortunately, courses like Cyber-Security and Ethical Hacking are not offered in any Universities in Nigeria. Enrolling in Covenant University for my higher education, I decided to pursue a degree in Information Communication Engineering. In my third year, I started to learn a little bit of coding in Python and I became interested in finding bugs in lines of code that already exist, this was very profitable in sharpening my skills. I carried on this zeal of being a better coder by getting certified in Python.
National College of Ireland Campus has come highly recommended for this course and having looked at your modules, I believe at the end of my MSc degree, I will not only be well-grounded in cyber-security but also a problem solving fortified white-hat hacker, an individual living my dream as a cyber-security professional.
In light of all this, I know that the GOI-IES (Government of Ireland - International Education Scholarship) will be very beneficial towards reducing my financial stress and allowing me to concentrate on my studies and bring to fruition my goal to be able to protect not only my country, Nigeria but also Ireland. In this digital era, more of our lives are increasingly growing to depend on the internet from emails, financial banking, social networking and so much more. The need for cyber-security professionals is at an all-time high. If granted, GOI-IES would enable me to be at the forefront of the fight to defend the global internet, making the digital world safe for all.
One in a separate thread.