APU to set up first Cyberthreats Intelligence Centre on campus
By Digital News Asia November 4, 2019
- Significant further development of existing integrated Cybersecurity Talent Zone
- Supports APU’s aspirations to encourage advanced cybersecurity research
Asia Pacific University of Technology and Innovation (APU) has signed a MoU with Rocheston Ltd, a US-based cybersecurity training company, to set up the first Cyberthreats Intelligence Centre (CIC) in Malaysia to be based within a university campus.
“The formation of this Cyberthreats Intelligence Centre represents a significant further development of APU’s existing state-of-the-art integrated Cybersecurity Talent Zone (CTZ) which was launched in 2018. This CTZ presently already comprises a NATO-standard Cyber Range and Security Operation Centre, APU’s CISCO Networking Academy, as well as centres for research and development for IoT and digital forensics,” said Parmjit Singh, founder & chief executive officer of APIIT Education Group.
A Premier Digital Tech Institute in Malaysia, APU has a diverse student body consisting of 12,000 students from 130 countries.
Rocheston founder and CTO, Haja Mohideen highlighted the key role the APU centre will play. “This Centre will act as the central hub for a network of Cyberthreats Intelligence Centres that will eventually be set up across Asia, and will promote openness in data sharing. Activities of the CIC will also be based on sound academic standards and principles. Many of the existing cyberthreats intelligence centres globally tend to impose heavy restrictions for data sharing and analysis.”
The Rocheston-APU CIC will aim to be more open and objective in its operations and information dissemination so that many parties – students, academics and industry - can benefit through enhanced preparedness in cybersecurity and cyber safety and increased networking supported by the best young talents.
The CIC also supports APU’s aspirations to encourage and support advanced cybersecurity research – particularly in the area of cyberthreats intelligence, covering data collection, processing, analysis and dissemination. The outcomes of this analysis will be shared and published for the benefit of cybersecurity training, incident response, security operations, vulnerability management, risk analysis, fraud management and cybersecurity leadership.
This collaboration between APU and Rocheston held greater meaning due to the fact that Haja himself is an illustrious alumnus of APIIT/APU, who has established himself as an internationally based cybersecurity specialist who is always focused on efforts to provide opportunities to students to develop hands-on industry-relevant skills in cybersecurity at an affordable cost.
With the signing of this MoU, APU will provide the necessary physical space and facilities for the establishment and operation of the CIC and Rocheston will provide the necessary expertise, applications, data and tools required to drive the CIC. It is expected that the CIC will provide opportunities for students and researchers to have first-hand experience in cyberthreats analysis, while researchers will be able to collaborate and make use of the data to forecast future attack trends and find improvements to mitigate complex cyber risks that may not be well understood previously.