Soochow Working with Israel, Singapore to Train Top Cybersecurity Talents

On November 1^st, 2021, Soochow’s partnership with Israel’s ThinkCyber and Singapore’s Centre For Cybersecurity officially began. Originating two years ago, this cooperation provides cybersecurity license preparation courses along with a cybersecurity situation simulator, the Cyberium Arena, the first cybersecurity center of its kind in universities in Taiwan.

SU President Wei-Ta Pan said that cybersecurity is national security, and it will develop into an important industry in the future. Soochow University hopes to equip its students with basic cybersecurity capabilities along with their majors, so that students can protect themselves and the working environment when facing rapid development of innovative technologies, Pan added.

“When the Cybersecurity Management Act was passed in the legislature, we were determined to develop a set of the best cybersecurity training courses and environment in the country,” said Kai-Chieh Chia, Director of the Cyber Security Center of Excellence (CCoE).

In view of the fact that present training of cybersecurity talents mostly relies on lectures with written materials, the cybersecurity training simulation software (Cyberium Arena) introduced with this cooperation will allow students to actually see the cybersecurity situations happen on the screen. Students can learn to make various responses to different types of cybersecurity threats, and the system will evaluate the trainee’s defensive capabilities.

Chia said this cooperation with cybersecurity training institutions in Singapore and Israel, coupled with Soochow’s Center for Big Data Analysis and Research experience in using big data to analyze abnormal activities, would not only enhance cybersecurity training but also improve the technical capabilities of cybersecurity personnel.

Dr. Woo Lip Lim, currently a senior cybersecurity consultant at Temasek and former founder of Ensign InfoSecurity, believes that in this era of 5G, Internet of Things and smart cities, there will be a serious shortage of global cybersecurity talents. If this problem is not properly addressed in the short term, it will even affect the promotion of many innovative technology services. After all, without security, there will be no trust, and there will be no way to attract consumers to buy innovative products with confidence.

This cooperation is an extension of the establishment of CCoE in Soochow two years ago, when Soochow partnered with Singapore’s cybersecurity company Ensign InfoSecurity.