Promoting cyber security throughout Asean

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MALAYSIAN students keen to explore a career in cyber security now have more chances to do so with the help of a NZ$33,000 Education New Zealand (ENZ) grant, which will promote the University of Waikato’s Master of Cyber Security degree throughout Asean countries.

The promotion is aimed at generating interest in New Zealand’s only cyber security master’s programme and to enable the University of Waikato to further develop partnerships with organisations in the Asean region.

Launched in late 2013 along with the country’s first cyber security lab, the master’s programme seeks to provide New Zealand – as one of the fastest growing IT sectors in the world – with skilled cyber security professionals.

The grant, announced by New Zealand’s Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment Minister Steven Joyce earlier this month, is part of a NZ$450,000 co-funding initiative through ENZ towards 12 new growth schemes in the international education industry.

According to University of Waikato cyber security head Dr Ryan Ko, the grant will provide resources to help increase the university’s profile in fast developing regions such as Asean. He added that the grant will also enable degree students to serve an international market that is currently on the search for cyber security professionals.

With the global cyber security market expected to grow to US$94 billion by 2017, demand for cyber security experts is now growing at 3.5 times the pace of the overall IT job market. Globally, the demand is growing 12 times faster than the international total labour market.

The university’s cyber security initiatives already have strong industry support. Last year, it received NZ$12.2 million from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s new science research funding.

This funding is being put towards the Stratus (Security Technologies Returning Accountability, Transparency and User-centric Services in the Cloud) project, which is a six-year cyber security project that seeks to provide a significant boost to New Zealand’s emerging cyber security industry, along with creating tools which will return control of cloud-based data to users.

For more information on the University of Waikato’s Master of Cyber Security programme, go to www.waikato.ac.nz.

Information on study options in New Zealand can be found at www.studyinnewzealand.com.