Cybersecurity professionals receive training from Fortinet

Local cybersecurity education is being promoted by Fortinet in an effort to address the skills gap in Australia and New Zealand. The company will provide universal access to its Network Security Expert (NSE) training and certification program.

Fortinet’s NSE program utilises a multilevel curriculum that progresses from cybersecurity fundamentals and overall context up to advanced security implementation strategies and technical concepts. This program design has resulted in Fortinet issuing over 50,000 NSE certifications globally.

Fortinet’s Network Security Academy (FNSA) was established at TAFE SA to help provide a skilled workforce that meets the needs of the IT industry and matches with the economic and employment priorities of South Australia. From code to client to cloud, the academy brings the training and certification opportunities previously only offered to Fortinet customers and partners to educational institutions, non-profit organisations and veterans programs.

The academy will provide Fortinet’s NSE training and certification opportunities to participants through theoretical lectures and hands-on laboratory practice. Participating students are equipped with additional knowledge for a successful career in network security. Fortinet sponsors the training content for staff and examinations for each Academy site, along with supporting instructor preparation.

Public demand for Fortinet’s NSE program drove the creation of FNSA for secondary and post-secondary education institutions. These institutions, including TAFE SA, partner with Fortinet and leverage the NSE curriculum to develop cybersecurity courses currently offered at schools in 46 countries.

With the public availability of the NSE program, Fortinet is taking steps to engage a new generation of aspiring cybersecurity professionals by providing a gateway to attain the highly desirable and lucrative skills in the growing field of IT security. Fortinet is offering NSE program level 1 courses to the public and will follow with NSE program levels 2 and 3 in the second quarter of 2017. Fortinet hopes to further expand the FNSA offering to more educational institutions in Australia and New Zealand in 2017.

“Offering cybersecurity education to the public for free has significant importance for countries like Australia and New Zealand, where there’s a high adoption of new technologies and IT security awareness in everyday life has become an essential skill,” said Jon McGettigan, senior director, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands at Fortinet.

Fortinet’s quarterly Threat Landscape Report for Q4 of 2016 found a continued trend of increasing volume, prevalence and intensity of cyber attacks globally. The report’s findings show that cybercriminals are exploiting three central trends of threat landscape: application exploits, malicious software (malware) and botnets. This threat intelligence was based on over a trillion security events that occurred between 1 October and 31 December 2016.

An earlier report from the Fortinet Cyber Threat Assessment Program (CTAP) also found unprecedented attack volumes globally, with more than 185 million threat events. The report noted that more than half of respondents across ANZ specifically detected malicious websites, demonstrating that organisations need greater threat protection.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/vinnstock

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