Scotland has a gender gap in cybersecurity and a skills gap in cybersecurity, and they are not unrelated problems. The Cyber and Fraud Centre Scotland's See It Be It conference, returning on 2 October 2026 at the Royal Bank of Scotland's Edinburgh offices, takes both seriously. The free event brings together female high school pupils, university and college students, educators, and working cyber professionals for a day designed to close the distance between ambition and entry into the sector.
The conference is backed by Royal Bank of Scotland and Fortinet, two organisations with serious skin in the cybersecurity game, which gives the event credibility beyond the typical awareness-day circuit. Fortinet's 2024 Global Cybersecurity Skills Gap Report found that 67 percent of organisations globally struggle to recruit qualified security talent, a figure that maps directly onto the pain Scottish SMEs report when trying to source affordable, competent cyber support.
According to the Scottish Government's CyberScotland Partnership, women currently make up fewer than one in four of the cybersecurity workforce in Scotland. That is not just a diversity problem; it is a capacity problem. Every qualified professional who does not enter the sector because they never saw anyone who looked like them is a gap in the talent pool that every Scottish business eventually feels, usually when something goes wrong at the worst possible moment.
For SME owners, this event is worth understanding on two levels. First, it is a pipeline. If you want to hire cyber talent in three to five years, the people in that room on 2 October are your candidates. Sending someone from your business to speak, sponsor a table, or simply show up is an investment in that pipeline. Second, it is a network. The Cyber and Fraud Centre Scotland runs practical support for Scottish businesses year-round, including fraud prevention resources and incident response guidance that are genuinely useful and genuinely free. Being in that ecosystem matters.
The event is free to attend. Registration details are available through the Cyber and Fraud Centre Scotland. If you employ anyone in a finance, admin, or IT-adjacent role, the centre's broader resources at cyberfraudcentre.com are worth bookmarking regardless of whether you make it to the October conference. Cyber threats to Scottish SMEs are not decreasing, and the answer is not always an expensive managed service provider. Sometimes it is knowing the right people and having the right habits in place before something goes wrong.