Edgescan at the Women’s International Cybersecurity Challenge 2026
This week, Edgescan was a Gold sponsor of the Women’s International Cybersecurity Challenge 2026 in Dublin. Our own Jacqueline Medeiros, a security analyst and operations team lead, was there throughout. Watching the competition, one thing stood out. The best people in this field are not the ones who know the most. They are the ones who never stop learning.
Nobody is born knowing how to break an application
There is a myth that good penetration testers arrive fully formed, that you had to be hacking since childhood to belong here. It isn’t true.
Jackie has competed in events like this since 2022. Her verdict on her first attempt: “Didn’t do well.” She kept going. She competed again the next year, learned from the testers around her, and today leads an operations team that breaks applications for a living.
That is how the skill is built. Practice, repetition, collaboration, and a willingness to fail in front of other people and try again.
Cybersecurity is a profession without a finish line
Threats evolve. Technology changes. What worked last year may not work today. A tester who stops learning falls behind fast, because the ground keeps moving.
This is why events like WICC matter beyond the leaderboard. The format let competitors see how others approached a problem, and the challenge creators walked through their solutions afterward. As Jackie put it, you get to watch how someone else’s brain takes a problem apart. That kind of shared learning is hard to find anywhere else.
Cybersecurity is bigger than hacking
Ask most people what cybersecurity is and they picture a hacker. That picture keeps talented people out.
Jackie makes the point plainly: the field is vast, and it is not one-size-fits-all. Governance and risk, business continuity, penetration testing, and much more. Anyone with a STEM background can find a place in it. The “just hackers and attackers” mindset narrows something that should be wide open, and it discourages people who would be very good at the work.
Curiosity is the skill that matters most
Tools change. Certifications expire. Curiosity does neither. The people who thrive in security are the ones who keep asking how something works, and what happens if you push on it.
At Edgescan, that belief shapes how we work. Our platform combines automated testing with expert human validation, and the people doing that validation, like Jackie, treat every assessment as something to learn from. We invest in people as much as in technology, because in this field the two are inseparable.
Jackie’s advice to anyone considering a career in cyber was simple. Go to events. Talk to the professionals there. Ask questions. Nobody expects you to have all the answers, and the fastest way to learn is to ask someone who has been doing it longer.
That is the community we want to support, and events like WICC are where it grows.
To see how Edgescan combines expert human testers with continuous automated testing, request a demo.
