The initial cohort in the first-ever cyber security training initiative undertaken by Government, has been congratulated for staying the course.
The plaudits came last Thursday as Minister of Education, Technological and Vocational Training, Kay McConney, addressed the participants midway through their 16-week-long programme, during a reception at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre.
The reception saw Canadian cybersecurity firm, SDOCCA Cyber Inc., meeting the students in the Cyber Nations Training Initiative, a programme created in Canada with the bold mission of training 100,000 people from the Caribbean and Africa as cybersecurity operations analysts, incident responders and cyber literacy coordinators.
Minister McConney, urging the 141 students to continue on, said: “I also want to encourage you to know that you’re almost there. You have come further than you have to go now, so please just hang in there…. I have no doubt that you will continue to display the level of commitment and dedication that I’m told you have demonstrated over the last several weeks.”
She reminded them that they were expected to be the ones who would “set the mark for Barbados” in relation to cybersecurity training, and noted that neither the Education Ministry nor the Student Revolving Loan Fund, through whom they were being facilitated, had ever done anything of that nature before.
“Barbados has not done anything like this before. You are the pioneers and it is how you perform that will set the bar and help our Prime Minister, and my Ministry, to be able to say ‘let’s put more resources behind these young people to take them farther and to bring more along’,” Ms. McConney stated.
At the start of the cybersecurity training on January 30, there were 156 students. However, 15 persons withdrew for various reasons, including work and personal commitments, the intensity of the course and the inability to get the time off to fully dedicate to the course.
The Education Minister, noting that such persons may choose to return later, stressed it was expected that those who remained would go the whole distance. Alluding to the range of topics covered thus far – Cybersecurity Fundamentals, Threat Landscape, Securing the Internet of Things and Cybersecurity Standards and Frameworks – as well as those yet to come, she noted that they were designed to provide a solid foundation in cybersecurity and ultimately could allow students to be more employable, not just here in Barbados or the region, but globally.
Ms. McConney also shared that 58 per cent of the students are males, 42 per cent are females, while 60 per cent or 85 students had no prior training in information communications technology or cyber security before attending the course.
Adding that the average age of the students is 30, while eight are under 20 years and four over 55 years of age, she stressed: “This is an indication of the diversity that is in this room. And, the fact that no matter where you are, what stage in your life you are, that you can indeed participate in the world that is emerging ahead of us.”