Offering 3000 Training Opportunities: The National Cybersecurity Academy Completes the First Phase and Launches the Second One of CyberPro Training Initiative

The National Cybersecurity Academy, affiliated with the National Cybersecurity Authority (NCA), has finished last week the fourth and final batch of the training courses of the first phase of CyberPro initiative, which aims to develop the skills of the national cybersecurity workforce and to qualify outstanding fresh University graduates from cybersecurity and related programs and encourage them to work in this field.
The training was provided by world-class international training institutes and under the Academy’s direct supervision. 179 trainees, who work for national entities, have benefitted from the fourth batch of courses, which makes the total number of trainees in the first phase of this initiative 1039 male and female trainees. 751 of them are employees in 113 national entities, and 288 of them are fresh graduates from 23 Saudi universities and colleges. 15 courses for the foundational level have taken place during the first phase, as well as 10 courses for the intermediate level, and 12 courses for the advanced level.
This week, the second phase of this initiative was launched; its target is 2000 students and employees. The second phase includes four levels: the foundation level, the beginner level, the intermediate level and the advance level. The foundation level courses offer extensive theoretical and practical training for two weeks on the following subjects: Introduction to Networks and Operation Systems, and Introduction to Cybersecurity.
The beginner level courses offer training courses for two weeks on the following subjects: Cybersecurity Essentials for Operation Systems and Cybersecurity Essentials for networks. As for the intermediate level, the training courses last are two-week long and cover the following topics: Infrastructure Protection, Ethical Hacking, and Penetration Testing Essentials. Finally, the advance level training courses are for one week and cover advanced topics in one of the following areas: Incident Response, Monitoring and Detecting Vulnerabilities, Advanced Penetration Testing, Governance and Risks, Protection of Industrial Control Systems and Secure Programming.
In this phase, the academy will invite fresh graduates from the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Program for International Scholarships to apply for these courses, as well as graduates from local universities. The Academy will also coordinate with national entities to recruit CyberPro trainees in order to meet the national workforce need in cybersecurity through training courses aimed for employment and on-job training as well.
The Academy’s target is to train 20,000 citizens who work in cybersecurity or ready to work in it before 2022. The goal of this is to create a strong base of qualified cadres, to help reach a secure, resilient and trusted Saudi cyberspace that enables growth and prosperity.
This is one of many initiatives launched by the NCA to help address the shortage of the national workforce in this critical field, and to meet the needs of the labour market to protect the Saudi cyberspace. One other initiative was implemented earlier, when the NCA cooperated with the Ministry of Education to offer 540 scholarships for Saudi students to study cybersecurity in international outstanding universities through the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Program for Scholarships Abroad as part of an initiative to offer 2500 scholarships over five years .