On 31 January, REWIRE’s partners European Vocational Training Association (EVTA) and the European Forum of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (EfVET), organised an online event “REWIRE Cybersecurity Blueprint: The Future of Cybersecurity Education in Europe”.
The event aimed to promote REWIRE’s Cybersecurity Blueprint which focuses on providing a global synthetic vision of all elements relevant to cybersecurity education, shortage of cybersecurity workforce and skill gaps as a major concern for both economic development and national security across Europe.
The event highlighted main components of cybersecurity blueprint which include a skills framework built upon already existing work (ENISA, ECSF, ESCO, and other pilot projects training activities), information about the attractiveness of the cybersecurity sector in terms of employment, tools related to cybersecurity skills identification and development, as well as information about the governance of cybersecurity skills framework in long term.
Valentina Chanina and Giulia Meschino, Secretary Generals of EfVET and EVTA respectively, opened the session by briefly presenting the scope of the event and roles of their organisations in the project and moderated the event.
Mr. Manos Athanatos, a Technical Project Manager at FORTH-ICS and Technical University of Crete, Greece who is also involved in REWIRE, presented the project and gave a detailed overview of the European Cybersecurity Blueprint and its main components which include a skills framework built upon the already existing work, information about the attractiveness of the cybersecurity sector in terms of employment, tools related to cybersecurity skills identification and development, as well as information about the governance of cybersecurity skills framework in the long term.
Ms. Nina Olesen, Head of Sector for Applications and Human Factors at the European Cyber Security Organisation (ECSO), continued with highlighting the importance of bringing more gender diversity and equality in the cybersecurity domain. She particularly stressed the existence of inspiring initiatives such as Women4Cyber Foundation that aim at closing the gender gap and increasing the participation of girls and women in cybersecurity education and professions.
Dr. Sage Lal, Director of UK and Ireland Operations in Cybersec Consulting, presented the future of the cybersecurity skills and intelligence, the role that Technical Vocational Education and Training can play in addressing skills gaps, and the shortage of the cybersecurity workforce in the world. Furthermore, he pointed out that cybersecurity has received more global attention due to the greater exposure of governments, businesses, and the general public to cyber threats.
The event was concluded with the Q&A session between the speakers and the participants.