An Academic Partnership Agreement was signed between the “CYBERCOR” National Institute for Cybersecurity Innovation and Fortinet on April 30, 2024. This collaboration marks a major step toward providing top-tier opportunities and certifications for students and professionals, preparing them to become experts in network security using Fortinet’s technologies and solutions.
The academic partnership program is designed to cultivate a skilled cybersecurity workforce by integrating into educational institutions. This initiative bridges the gap between education and career by offering students access to industry-recognized Fortinet training and certification courses. The Academic Partner Program collaborates with top educational institutions worldwide, helping students join the elite ranks of qualified cybersecurity professionals. Supported by the prestige of Fortinet, a global leader in cybersecurity known for its Fortinet Security Fabric platform, this program provides robust protection against cyber threats.
As an authorized academic partner in this global initiative, CYBERCOR can integrate the “Training Institute” certification directly into UTM’s existing courses or offer access to the educational platform as standalone continuous training. To build skills aligned with market demands, UTM will incorporate Fortinet’s security tools and technologies in laboratory work and practical activities with students.
The academic partnership program enables institutions to offer industry-specific training and certification in cybersecurity. Graduates will gain essential skills to protect networks from global cyber threats such as phishing, ransomware, and business email compromise. An imperative aspect of this collaboration is the provision of free vouchers for certification exams to every student enrolled in Fortinet courses.
At the signing of the academic partnership agreement between UTM and Fortinet, representatives of UTM’s new partner—Lucian Nanau, Major Account Manager; Robert Guțuleac, Country Manager of NetSafe, Fortinet’s distributor in Moldova; and Sergiu Rabii, Program Director of the “Future Technologies” project (FTA) and the strategic implementer of CYBERCOR—engaged in discussions with UTM Rector Professor Viorel Bostan, Ph.D., and Vice-Rector for Digitalization Dinu Țurcanu, Ph.D. It has been emphasized that Fortinet’s courses cover a broad spectrum of essential cybersecurity topics. These include the fundamentals of cybersecurity, configuration and administration of Fortinet devices like FortiGate firewalls, network traffic monitoring and analysis for threat detection, cloud security solutions implementation and management, and advanced security technologies such as DDoS attack protection and endpoint security. These programs aim to prepare and certify professionals for key roles in cybersecurity, enhancing the skills necessary for security engineers, network administrators, and security analysts. The collaboration between UTM and Fortinet will elevate cybersecurity competence in the country and open up career opportunities in this rapidly growing field.
The academic partnership agreement between the Technical University of Moldova and Fortinet represents a significant initiative in promoting education and training of cybersecurity specialists. This collaboration strengthens UTM’s position as a center of excellence in the field, enhancing career capabilities and prospects for both students and professionals, while proving the importance of partnerships between academic institutions and industry in addressing the evolving needs of the technology and cybersecurity sectors.
Given that Fortinet’s tools and platforms provide accelerated hardware performance and integrated multi-layer security levels for network and application protection against threats, Vice-Rector Dinu Țurcanu expressed his confidence in the necessity of such partners for CYBERCOR’s operation. Mr. Țurcanu extended thanks to the company’s representatives for their openness and collaboration, assuring that Fortinet’s range of solutions—innovative protection and content analysis technologies, inter-network screens, VPN, anti-malware, unauthorized access prevention, application control, web filtering, anti-spam, wireless controllers, WAN accelerators, management products, email protection, database protection, and end-user protection—will become integral to Cybersecurity in Moldova.
“We aim to ensure that the educational path and courses for students, master’s students, doctoral students, and employees of public or private sectors are of the highest quality and cover a wide range of case scenarios. We sincerely thank the Technical University of Moldova for their openness,” said Lucian Nanau.
Founded in 2000 by Ken Xie, a visionary former President and CEO of NetScreen (which was later sold to Juniper for approximately $3.5 billion), Fortinet is led by a strong management team with vast experience in networking and security solutions. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with support, development, and sales offices across North America, Europe, and Asia to ensure customer support and success.
It’s worth mentioning that Fortinet, a global leader in integrated cybersecurity solutions, has been recognized as a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for wired and wireless LAN infrastructure. Fortinet’s innovative approach, using the unified Security Fabric of FortiOS, allowed for highly integrated wired and wireless product offerings, positioning it as an industry leader.
