The Girl Scouts are working to bring more than cookies to your table, reports a recent press release. Along with Hewlett Packard Enterprise , the Girl Scouts have shifted their focus to cybersecurity with the introduction of an interactive curriculum to learn about how to ensure cyber safety, and of course, a badge. "Kids are becoming more mobile, networked and connected, but this also comes with alarming risks and dangers. Making basic cybersecurity awareness at a young age is imperative, and as fundamental as safety skills in the physical world, like learning how to cross the street," said HPE Chief Information Security Officer Liz Joyce. (See Girl Scouts Announces Pledge to Bring 2.5 Million Girls Into STEM Pipeline by 2025 and HPE Launches Interactive Game Teaching Young Girls Critical Cybersecurity Skills.)

We often idealize our neighbors in the Great White North, yet The Star, based on a report by The Brookfield Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, summarizes that the pay gap between men and women in tech in Canada is nothing to envy. While the US pay gap hovers somewhere between $5,328 and $14,450 depending on location, the Canadian pay gap is nearly $20,000 -- not exactly chump change. "There are diversity and representation challenges, but they are not necessarily worse than other parts of the economy," said Sean Mullin, the Brookfield Institute's executive director. "In some ways [tech] is better, but better is not good enough. We shouldn't be satisfied with better." This particular study examined Canadians with a bachelor's degree; the pay gap percentage ranged among other education levels. (See Equal Pay Day: Time to Get Paychecks in Check.)

In AI's latest flop, it's been discovered that Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN)'s facial analysis technology, Amazon Rekognition, is mistaking women of color for men. Vox cites a study out of MIT and the University of Toronto that shows that darker-skinned women were recognized as men 31% of the time compared to 7% for lighter-skinned women. Men, of course, were always recognized as men. Amazon announced last year that it would be selling this new technology to law enforcement, which caused quite the uproar from human rights groups. "On one hand, the fears about Amazon's facial analysis products are very much related to civil rights. On the other, they're about the troubling ways that racism and technology have intersected," the article states. Amazon has clarified that this issue has now been rectified, yet issues some very fuzzy instructions on how the technology should be used, at once saying that "facial recognition should never be used in a way that violates an individual's rights" yet also putting the onus of deciding those rights into the government and law enforcement's hands. (See Why We Need Diversity Before AI Takes Over.)

It turns out that the way that men and women network requires different approaches to be effective. ABC News explains that women have to go above and beyond -- compared to their male counterparts -- when it comes to making meaningful career connections. Specifically, women need groups of other like-minded women, and those who have these support systems are "nearly three times more likely to get a better job," a recent study suggests. While everything men do to network (social media like LinkedIn, networking events, reaching out to acquaintances, etc.) are also crucial steps for women looking to get ahead, the importance of women having a female peer group cannot be overstated. "A lot of my female MBA students believe that what men are doing will work for them," said Brian Uzzi, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and an author of the study. "But women who [only] emulate men's networks do the worst." (See Fujitsu's Sales Director: Be Your Own Champion.)

— Eryn Leavens, Special Features & Copy Editor, Light Reading