In another initiative to bridge the gap between demand and supply of cybersecurity professionals, the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA) will develop a new academy to train cybersecurity professionals. The announcement was made by Mr. Teo Chee Hean, the Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) of Singapore, and Coordinating Minister for National Security at the 2nd Singapore International Cyber Week (SICW) opening ceremony on 19 September.
The CSA Academy will start operations in the later part of this fiscal year. For a start, the Academy will provide intermediate to advanced training to cyber defenders in the government, and also invite selected parties in the Critical Information Infrastructure (CII) sectors to join in the training. The trainings will be focused on targeted niche areas that go beyond what is normally available in the market. This will be expanded later to train cybersecurity professionals for the wider community.
The CSA Academy will partner leading industry players. US-based cybersecurity firm, FireEye, will be the first partner to help provide training in incident response and malware analysis. The incident response training is designed to build capabilities to effectively defend against cyber-attacks on computer systems and rapidly detect and respond to cyber threats that continue to increase in frequency and sophistication. The training in malware analysis will help cyber security professionals build their capabilities with the tools and methodologies used to perform malware analysis.
Mr David Koh, Chief Executive, CSA, said: “The CSA Academy was mooted to better train our cyber defenders, and equip them with the right skills and expertise to defend our networks. Cyber attacks have become increasingly sophisticated, some of them can be highly complex and targeted. CSA is glad to have FireEye on board with us to provide customised training for our cyber defenders. We welcome more industry partners to join us in this endeavour to raise the quality of cybersecurity professionals in Singapore.”
DPM Teo also announced the launch of the Cybersecurity Awards to recognise outstanding cybersecurity professionals, enterprises and students who have made significant contributions to Singapore’s cybersecurity ecosystem. The awards are organised by the Association of Information Security Professionals (AISP), and supported by CSA and six other professional and industry associations- Singapore Computer Society (SCS), Singapore Infocommm Technology Federation (SiTF), (ISC)2, Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA), Cloud Security Alliance, Law Society and the IT Service Management Forum (itSMF).
There are three main award categories: 1) Professionals; 2) Enterprises and 3) Students. Each award nominee will go through two rounds of judging. The winners will receive the awards from Dr. Yaacob Ibrahim, Minister for Communications and Information and Minister-in-charge of Cyber Security at the inaugural Cybersecurity Gala Dinner in February 2018.
Nomination is open to Singaporeans and Singapore Permanent Residents for the individual awards, and Singapore-registered companies for the enterprise awards. The judging panels will comprise industry leaders and senior officials from CSA.