MDEC AIMS TO GROOM CYBERSECURITY TALENT
Agency inks new partnership to address shortage in cybersecurity space
MALAYSIA Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) is stepping up efforts to address the shortage of 3,000 professionals in the cybersecurity space through the Platform for Real Industry Driven Project Exchange (PRIDE), its talent programme.
To achieve its goal, MDEC exchanged partnership agreements with United Kingdom’s Protection Group International Ltd and Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation yesterday.
MDEC chief executive officer Datuk Yasmin Mahmood said the talent shortage, which stood at one million professionals worldwide, was a crisis that could not be ignored.
“Asean’s digital economy has the potential to add US$1 trillion (RM3.94 trillion) to the gross domestic product over the next 10 years.
“However, the increasing wave of cyber threats and risks may impede trust and resilience in the digital economy and prevent the region from realising its full digital potential,” she said after the exchange of the agreements.
According to a recent AT Kearney cybersecurity Asean study, the top 1,000 Asean firms could lose US$750 billion in market capitalisation and cybersecurity concerns could derail the region’s digital innovation agenda — a central pillar for its success in the digital economy.
Citing a December 2017 LinkedIn report on cybersecurity talent in Malaysia, Yasmin said 21 per cent of them had up to four years of experience.
“The overall situation is a cause for alarm as the funnel of new talent is too small and not enough to sustain and support growing demand of our digital economy,” she said.
“Through the facilitation of MDEC’s PRIDE programme, we will increase the industry-readiness of our graduates with ‘ELITE,’ the educational outreach initiative from cybersecurity industry provider TecForte, which features a live learning Security Information Event Managament (SIEM) platform.
She said through SIEM, students would be introduced to hands-on cybersecurity operations and exposed to real-time event analytics, global threat intelligence and incidents handling framework within a campus environment.