We live in fast-changing times, the world is constantly transforming, and without digital skills or knowledge in IT you cannot keep up with the progress. The level of the risks is directly proportional to the growth of accessibility to information, and the chances of facing compromising actions and loss of reputation are very high. In order to counter cyber attacks, it is necessary to increase information culture within the population, to prepare specialists in the field, and to encourage the development of digital skills that meet the needs of today’s society. For this reason, UTM implements the Cyber Security Academy, with the support of the Future Technologies Project (Innovate Moldova), funded by USAID and the Government of Sweden.
On January 25, 2023, UTM hosted a meeting with its most faithful and competent partners – Magda JIANU, Head of Commercial Sales, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa at Palo Alto Networks, and Andrian CORNEI, General Manager at XONTECH Systems/Palo Alto Networks representative in the Republic of Moldova, who came up with ideas and solutions for various case scenarios in the field cybersecurity, as well as ideas for the improvement of related courses taught to students, teachers, and civil servants – the future specialists who are going to fill the shortage of personnel in the field of cybersecurity.
Given the need for strategic partners capable of coming up with the best solutions in the field of cybersecurity at a global level, the UTM Cyber Security Academy invites the managers of multinational companies to participate in the discussions regarding their involvement in this project. The discussions have already been initiated on January 10, with the organization of an online meeting on the topic of ways to increase the quality of the study programs in the field of Information Security. The role of the Academy is to provide IT education with a focus on the integration of cybersecurity subjects, for the purpose of closing the skills gaps in this sphere.
Dinu ȚURCANU, the vice-rector for Digitalization at UTM and the strategic coordinator of the Cyber Security Academy, expressed his confidence in the success of the activity of the new Academy. Mr. Țurcanu saluted the gesture of the multinational company Palo Alto Networks, which agreed to support the Technical University of Moldova by offering top solutions in cybersecurity – Strata, Prisma, Cortex, as well as in the development of platforms, advanced firewall systems and cloud-based programs, that will aid in reaching peak performance in an ever-changing IT environment.
The factors that contributed to the creation of the Cyber Security Academy are: the increased number of cyber attacks within state institutions, the war happening at the border, the urgent need to prevent further online attacks and the provision of protection methods in the virtual space. In all initiatives and implementation strategies, UTM vice-rector Dinu ȚURCANU, the strategic coordinator of the new Cyber Security Academy entity, showed himself open to collaboration and to supporting IT education, especially in the Cyber Security field.
– We want to ensure that the educational path followed by Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral students, as well as employees of public or private authorities, is of high quality and addresses various case scenarios, and we are sincerely grateful to our partners for their openness to collaboration, the vice-rector concluded.
We remind you that in December 2022, four key institutions in the ICT ecosystem of the Republic of Moldova signed the partnership agreement on the establishment of the Cyber Security Academy at UTM, with investments of tens of millions of lei.
