Asuka Nakajima: From an Admiration for Hackers

2018/11/23

The cyberpunk novel "Project SEVEN." This was where it all began. In a nutshell, this novel is a story about a high school girl hacker who saves the world from cyberterrorists. When I first read this novel while living as a high school student in the United States, I was struck by the realization that "you can overthrow or save the world with just one computer!" and I felt a strong admiration for the existence of hackers. I then began studying security on my own. That feeling didn't change after I returned to Japan, and immediately after entering university, I asked Professor Keiji Takeda, who specialized in intrusion detection systems, to let me join his laboratory. I spent the next four years immersed in security, and after graduation, I became a security researcher at NTT.

What I can say from my experience is that "there is no difference between men and women in acquiring information security skills." However, the current gender ratio in the security industry is quite skewed. When I participated in external study groups, a 9:1 male-to-female ratio was common, and sometimes I was the only woman. I wondered why there are so few women in this industry, and thought that perhaps the background lies in high social and psychological hurdles to entry. Therefore, referencing women-only CTFs (security contests called Capture The Flag) in South Korea and elsewhere, I launched a project and organization called "CTF for GIRLS" to create a community for female security engineers.

Since holding its first workshop in June 2014, CTF for GIRLS has held 11 women-only CTF workshops and three CTF competitions to date. At the time of the launch, I was worried about whether people would actually show up because there were so few women to begin with, but from the first time until now, it has become a popular workshop with nearly 100 applicants, and last year we even held an international competition. The management members are all women, and it is now a large group of about 30 people. We have received many comments such as, "In other study groups, there were few women and it was hard to go because I stood out. In that respect, CTF for GIRLS is for women only and it's easy to ask questions," and I felt that by making it women-only, we were able to lower the hurdles to participation at least a little.

In the future, we aim to further expand the community. Ultimately, I want to aim for a world where CTF for GIRLS is unnecessary—in other words, a world where it is natural for women to be involved in security technology.