TAFE to offer courses in cybersecurity

| January 26, 2018

Colleges of Technical and Further Education around the country will now offer courses in cybersecurity qualifications to reduce the skills shortage faced by the IT industry. Significantly, this will be the first instance of the same qualifications being offered on a nationwide level by TAFE institutions around the whole country.

To ensure their commercial and technical relevance to the problems faced by companies today, the certificates and diplomas to be offered by TAFE institutions were developed with industry partners including ANZ Bank, the Australian Information Security Association, BAE Systems, Cisco Australia and New Zealand, CITT, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Deloitte, ISACA, NBN, REA Group, and Telstra.

Telstra’s Asia Pacific CISO, Berin Lautenbach, welcomed the new courses, noting the initiative by the TAFE network comes at a time when cyber-skills are becoming more critical than ever.

“Telstra, like other companies, is actively seeking to recruit new talent that have practical hands-on-keyboard cyber security skills. Knowing that the programs have been developed in close consultation with industry and are being delivered by TAFEs provides us with reassurance of the quality of the graduates that will come through.”

The Certificate IV in Cyber Security 22334VIC and Advanced Diploma of Cyber Security 22445VIC are practical, non-degree courses which students can complete on-the-job and, following a successful trial at Victoria’s Box Hill Institute, the courses will open for enrolment at the Canberra Institute of Technology, TAFE NSW, TAFE QLD, TAFE WA, and TAFE SA.

TasTAFE and Charles Darwin University in the Northern Territory have also pledged to provide training opportunities in cybersecurity and will work with industry in their regions to offer the courses later this year.

AustCyber CEO Craig Davies announced the launch of the courses at Parliament House in Canberra.  He argued that “There is a critical shortage of skilled cybersecurity workers in Australia needed to help secure organisations against malicious cyber activity, so it is extremely encouraging to see Australian TAFEs join forces to do what TAFEs do best – provide practical, hands-on skills aligned with industry needs”

“There was an enormous enthusiasm from every state and territory, which is an extraordinary outcome that’s been achieved here,” he said. “Recognising that this is an important area for businesses and government as well – we have a desperate need for more people with these skills in the federal government – and the TAFEs have seen the opportunity and of course they’re very well set up to go after these sorts of areas.”

The new Minister for Law Enforcement and Cybersecurity Angus Taylor acknowledges that Australia will need 11,000 more workers with cyber-qualifications in future years to tackle the menace of cyber crime, a scourge which already costs the nation more than $15 billion a year.

He told ABC news that “We’ve got an industry that’s expected to grow three times bigger than it is today over the coming decade, so we really need good Australians who want to find great opportunities. There’s fewer faster growing industries than this one.”

Minister Taylor hoped for a “reasonably quick” turnaround for students completing the degrees and underlined that the new courses are not designed to replace university degrees or other industry-based training that is still important for the country’s future.

“The criminals can be on your phone and in your home any day of the week now through technology — this is a very substantial threat and we need to combat it.  If we don’t get it right, it will slow down the rate at which we can digitise and capture those opportunities that we see in the digital economy.”

Cyber Security advisor Alastair MacGibbon has previously called for cyber-security education throughout Australia’s schools, with cybersecurity becoming a life skill which children raised in a digital age grow up as a natural part of life.

“For me, being a successful person in my generation was being able to read and write and do basic maths,” he told ZDNet last year. “What is going to get our kids to be successful in this world is the concept of computation, coding, and communication.

“If we’re going to win when it comes to protecting the Australian way of life, in terms of cybersecurity, then it indeed starts in primary schools.”

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