In order to combat cyber attacks, it is necessary to increase the information culture of the population, to prepare specialists in the field, to develop digital skills, and to meet the needs of contemporary society. This is the goal of the Cyber Security Academy, which will soon be implemented at UTM, with the support of the Future Technologies Project, funded by USAID and the Government of Sweden.
On May 22, a meeting was organized with the network security visionary and founder of Palo Alto Networks, Nir Zuk, at the headquarters of Tel Aviv, Israel. Nir Zuk has provided several innovations to the security industry over the past 20 years, being one of the developers of the Next Generation Firewall. He also worked on the world’s first intrusion prevention and detection device!
The members of the Moldovan delegation (Dinu ŢURCANU, vice-rector for Digitalization at UTM; Mihai LUPAŞCU, Secretary of State at the Ministry of Economic Development and Digitalization; Anatolie GOLOVCO, advisor to the Prime Minister in the field of Cyber Security; Alexandru COREŢCHI, director at I.P. Information Technology and Cyber Security Service; Doina NISTOR, director of the Future Technologies Project, and Sergiu RABII, director of the Future Technologies Sector within the Future Technologies Project) had a dedicated session with Nir, in which the founder of Palo Alto Networks spoke to them about the state of the information security industry, as well as the security concept and techniques used by the company. The officials, accompanied by Magda JIANU, commercial sales director, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa at Palo Alto Networks; Alex DUȚU and Teodor IACOB, representatives of Palo Alto Networks, held several constructive discussions with the company’s representatives in Israel, who came with best practices and solutions for various case scenarios in the field of cyber security, ideas that will complement the content of the courses taught to students, teaching staff, and civil servants – the specialists who are going to fill the shortage of personnel in the field of cyber security.
Mr. Țurcanu, vice-rector at UTM and strategic coordinator of the Cyber Security Academy, has expressed his optimistic view regarding the success of the new academy. The vice-rector welcomed the gesture of the multinational Palo Alto Networks, who agreed to support the Technical University of Moldova with top solutions in the field of cyber security – Strata, Prisma, Cortex, as well as in the development of platforms, advanced firewall systems and cloud-based solutions, leading to peak performance in a constantly changing IT environment.
– We want the educational path, as well as the courses that Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctoral students, and employees of public or private authorities will follow, to be of high quality and to cover various case scenarios, and we express our sincere thanks to our partners for their openness, concluded Mr. Țurcanu.
It should be mentioned that, from May 20-24, the official delegation from the Republic of Moldova is participating in a study visit to Tel Aviv, Israel, in order to get familiar with good practices in the field of educational programs in cyber security, but also with tools and products that offer some of the best cyber security solutions globally. Thus, the agenda of the delegation includes working meetings with the managers of the following institutions – Cyberbit; Ariel University; Keysight; Bakotech; Extreme Networks; NetScout; F5; Riverbed; Palo Alto Networks; CGS Tower Networks, etc.
The current visit, as well as the support in the implementation of the Cyber Security Academy at UTM, is due to the Future Technologies project, funded by USAID and the Government of Sweden.
