CSW18: Last Day was All About Cybersecurity Talent

The relevance of adequate cybersecurity education as well as attracting and developing cybersecurity talent, was the focal point of the final day of the Cyber Security Week Congress & Expo. Employers, cyberprofessionals, the education sector and students gathered during the trainee- and jobmarket and the Cyber Security Next Gen! event with up-and-coming cybersecurity talent.

The day was opened by Inge Philips, partner Cyber Risk Services at Deloitte. In an inspiring keynote for an audience of employers and educators, she focussed on the need for diversity in knowledge/expertises and the importance of collaboration between companies and knowledge- and educational institutions. She ended her presentation with the one-liner: “Nobody’s safe until everybody’s safe”.

Saskia Bruines, Deputy Mayor for The City of The Hague, emphasised the importance of educating, attracting and maintaining talent. She also pointed out that cybersecurity should be a basic skill, just like traffic rules taught to primary school pupils.

Director-general Higher Education of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, Marcelis Boereboom stated that the government “must invest in full width, both in education to stay in pace with corporate developments, as well as in science to explore and transcend new boundaries”.

Young Talent
During the trainee- and jobmarket, students of Forensic IT matched up with cybersecurity companies. The Cyber Security Next Gen! session focussed on the abuse of cloudservices for malware and also featured an interactive paneldiscussion consisting of public prosecutor for cyber security Lodewijk van Zwieten; Douwe Mik, partner cybersecurity of EY; and Nander Hokwerda, CTO of HackersHub.

In addition to all of this there were challenging mini-workshops with cybersecurity-experts of RedSocks Security, Thales EY, Compumatica, Strict, IGem TU Delft, Hackershub and Justice in Practice. 150 cybersecurity students from all across the country and from different educational levels participated in these interactive sessions to work on solutions for a more secure society.