CYBER RANGES for Academia and Training Providers
Schools, colleges, universities and training providers need to equip people (as young as 14-18 y.o.) with a holistic cyber security skillset, covering the relevant technical and soft skills that employers demand, and the ability to implement those skills in a business context. Many employers can benefit from broadening their recruitment practices, to employ more career starters, apprentices, graduates, people transitioning from other sectors or roles outside cyber security, and those from diverse groups. Cyber security is no longer just a talent domain reserved to the military and law enforcement agencies.
The fast-evolving nature of cyber security means that syllabuses constantly need refreshing. There are a desire for work placements to be integrated into degree courses and a strong sense that the quality of vendor-specific training can vary greatly. As a result, cyber-focused businesses spend much time researching the available training options. Schools, colleges and universities themselves are among such end-user businesses interested in cyber security skills!
No matter whether one educates through youth bootcamp initiatives, for micro-credentials or with fully-fledged Master-degree programmes, providing learners with actual cyber security competence, that is the ability to apply knowledge in a business context, is the key endpoint and the means to it is practice/hands-on learning.
High-quality hands-on experiential education in cyber security is not yet commoditized. Most current solutions to design and enable learning by doing do not scale up and are still unaffordable to many training providers. Practice-based competency assessments requires the design of simultaneous virtual labs and their execution and coordination. When the delivery of hands-on content is not controlled by the instructor and proctored by observers, whether on campus or via remote delivery, the assessment of large numbers of learners’ practice-based competencies becomes very difficult and it must be achieved through other solutions run in parallel, which add usability, complexity and cost issues.
Fortunately, CYBER RANGES addresses all the issues, boosts your Centre of Cyber Security Excellence outreach, and your Institutional visibility in the national cybersecurity programmes!
