 Dear colleagues, building on these webinars momentum and leveraging on the inspiring paths of our speakers whom I will have the pleasure to introduce a bit later. We are looking forward to a very engaging discussion today, and we hope that the event will culminates with a set of recommendations and how to empower women to enter the cybersecurity workforce, and to pursue leadership and managerial careers. With these, I have a great honor to pass the floor to Doreen Bogdan Martin, Director of ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau. Doreen, you have the floor please. Thank you very much Natalia and good morning, good afternoon, good evening everyone. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to address this important webinar on empowering women in the cybersecurity sector. For those of you who know me, I think you know how much I take to heart, empowering women and girls in the digital sector and as a woman working in what remains a largely male dominated field. I feel very lucky to have had a family that encouraged me to pursue a digital career. And, and while it's true that I was always very science oriented as a student. In fact, it wasn't really the the nuts and the bolts of technology that inspired me, but rather the impact that connectivity can have on the lives of disadvantaged communities on people. On leashing the power of technology to bring education, healthcare, agricultural information, financial services, and much, much more to people and communities in need. I know this is the dream of so many of us and as a mother of four teenagers. I understand that engaging the next generation with technology and helping countries and people to grow their digital skills is the key to the world's future developments. I'm also very aware of how important ensuring that the digital world remains safe that it remains trustworthy, and that it remains a positive environment for our youth and for all your users is a key priority. We live in a breathtaking world of new technologies and opportunities, yet right now the ability to leverage the transformational power of those technologies remain. It remains beyond the reach of billions that are living on what we would call the wrong side of the digital divide. By 3.6 billion people remain totally offline and hundreds of millions more struggle with slow, expensive and infrequent connections that are simply not sufficient to change their lives. By 3.6 billion, a disproportionate percentage are women and girls because we're battling not just a digital divide but we're also battling a digital gender divide as well. As a global average 52% of women are offline compared with 42% of men. Even this depressing picture really I mean it doesn't present the true picture because in the world's poorest nations, women's access to technology is much more limited. A recent report by our Equals Access Coalition indicates that in the world's 47 least developed countries, only one in seven women is connected with women 33% less likely to have an internet access to have internet access than their male counterparts. Even more worrying, research shows that this digital gender gap is actually widening in the very parts of the world that could benefit the most from better connectivity. The mobile industry body, the GSMA reports that in low and middle income countries, over 300 million fewer women than men access the internet via a mobile phone. Women are also 20% less likely than men to own their own smartphone. Unequal access to ICTs is not new. But this divide has taken on much greater amplitude in the wake of the COVID pandemic as women once again have had to bear the brunt of the social and economic consequences of this crisis. We've already heard warnings from the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, the UN Deputy Secretary General, that the pandemic is dramatically exacerbating existing gender inequalities. And Melinda Gates recently noted that ignoring the impact of COVID-19 on women could ultimately cost the world as much as $5 trillion. An education activist Malala warned that the 20 million school age girls impacted by school closures may never get the chance to resume their education once the pandemic has abated. Redressing the digital gender divide has what it's what prompted us to set up the equals global partnership for gender equality in the digital age. We set this up alongside with founding partners UN women, the International Trade Center GSMA and UN University equals battles this issue on three fronts. There's the digital opportunities gap in women's ability to access the technology that could change their lives. There's a gender leadership gap in the tech sector. And of course, there's the well documented digital skills gap between the number of young men and women entering the tech sector as engineers and as developers. For example, women in North America represent a mere 14% of the total cybersecurity workforce. That figure dwindles to 7%. And in the Middle East, it shrinks further to just 5%. This is particularly alarming for the cybersecurity sectors because it exacerbates an already chronic worldwide shortage of cybersecurity professionals. Analysts warn of the 3.5 million vacant cybersecurity jobs worldwide that there will be 3.5 million vacant by 2021. Right and that means that the global cybersecurity workforce needs to grow at a staggering rate of 145%, 145% each year, just to meet the shortage of skilled professionals. I suspect that the COVID pandemic has further added to the urgency with so many companies now seeking to move much of their business online in the face of chronic rolling lockdowns worldwide. We also know that COVID has unleashed, unfortunately, a vast torrent of online fraud, malware, targeting the vulnerability of people frightened by the virus, and worst of all, the millions of young children that were forced online unexpectedly for the first time, often without adequate supervision because of the widespread school closures. ITU is working with partners from industry, from government, academia and civil society to protect young people through our Child Online Protection Initiative. We launched a new set of guidelines last June to tackle this. But in the face of the rapidly mounting risks, we know that much, much more needs to be done. Dear colleagues, encouraging more women to join the cybersecurity sector will also be very important in terms of bringing new ideas and innovation to the field. Research tells us that greater diversity in teams leads to greater results, and yet right now we're failing to leverage that huge untapped pool of talent and potential. Inclusive diverse teams have been able to show that they are able to handle complex crises because of their different experiences, because of their different perspectives, and because the different ways of thinking in different ways to be more effective in developing fast and effective solutions. A recent survey found that only 24% of cybersecurity managerial roles are occupied by women, and that women are significantly less likely to choose a career in cybersecurity than men. It's estimated that if the number of female professionals working in cybersecurity were to equal that of men, the economic size of the cybersecurity industry could increase by over $30 billion in the US and 12 billion pounds in the UK alone. Dear colleagues, empowering women and girls to play an active role in the digital sector is important, because equality of opportunity lies at the very heart of a truly equal society in which everyone can flourish and realize their full potential. Equality of opportunity is a goal that I've prioritized during my more than 20 years at the ITU through internal programs like the ITU's gender task force, which I set up to try to redress the imbalance of women in senior management roles. Through the multi stakeholder activities like equals the global partnership that I just mentioned, which now has over 100 members from around the world, working together to close the digital divide. And through pioneering initiatives like our global girls and ICT day, which encourages girls to choose a career in the tech sector. To establish this celebration more than a decade ago girls and ICT day has gone to a truly global event that is now celebrated in over 170 countries worldwide on the fourth Thursday in April. ITU's work, the work of global partnerships like equals, the work of the multi stakeholder communities like WISIS, and the kinds of awareness raising and information sharing sessions like the one we're having today are all important parts of changing this picture. They say you should never waste a crisis. So, amidst all the upheaval and tragedy, we really need to try to embrace the constraints imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to change the way we do things, including how we work and how we work to close the inclusion gap in the cybersecurity domain. If there's anything that the COVID-19 pandemic has caught has taught us it is