Lawson is taking up Bachelor of IT major in cybersecurity.

Lawson’s foray in cybersecurity started when she first worked with cybersecurity firm Ionize as a year 12 student in one week.

Ionize then asked Lawson to work full time as an analyst on the company’s offensive security team.

She then moved to the Red Team and works as a penetration tester, and shifted to her dream job as a cloud security engineer at Tracer Cloud while studying at Australian National University.

Lawson has bagged several awards including the 2020 Lake Giniderra IT Award Recipient (awarded to the student with the highest IT grades in the school) and the 2020 WIC (Woman in ICT) Student Encouragement Award.

She was nominated for the 2021 Australian Woman in Security Best Security Student and was a top 10 finalist in the 2021 Fast (Female Advancing in Security and Technology) Awards.

Lawson said working in an industry that requires continuous learning motivates her.

“It is amazing to be involved in the delivery of cloud migration and cyber security services to clients, conduct incident responses, run penetration tests, analyse alerts, and apply what I am learning at university to the real world. This scholarship is helping me make an impact on the industry, not in three years when I finish my degree, but right now in my job. The core value of cybersecurity is to help and protect people, which perfectly aligns with my values,” she said.

“Alaina represents exactly the type of young woman the cybersecurity industry needs. She’s curious, smart and unafraid of change. At 19, she has already accomplished a great deal and we hope that this scholarship will help her continue to further her dreams and show both the industry and other young women that cybersecurity is a career that needs their contribution,” congratulated Eset Australia country manager Kelly Johnson.