The Commonwealth Bank has partnered with the University of New South Wales to develop a centre of expertise for cyber security education and research.

The $1.6 million, five-year partnership is aimed at boosting the nation’s pool of expertise in quality security engineering.

The Security Engineering Partnership (SEC.EDU) is designed to help build industry capacity to battle the rising menace of cyber intrusions, identify theft, malware attacks and a host of other online perils, and alleviate a critical shortage of cyber security skills available to Australian businesses.

In the last 12 months, the number of cyber security roles advertised in Australia has grown by more than 60 per cent. Figures also show that within the technology industry, cyber security roles are both the most difficult for employers to fill, and among the highest paid.

Under the SEC.EDU partnership, UNSW and CommBank will build a Security Engineering Lab, which will become a centre of expertise for education and research in the area. It includes:

  • A comprehensive applied cyber security undergraduate curriculum – a Bachelor of Computer Science (Security Engineering) – with the new curriculum to be published openly for sharing under creative commons licensing and made available on the internet as a massive open online course (MOOCs);
  • A new Security Engineering Lab for hands-on teaching of security courses;
  • Recruitment of world-class staff; and
  • Support for new PhD research tackling internet security issues and for the tutoring of undergraduates.

“It’s estimated that there’s a shortage of a million security professionals around the world, and companies constantly struggle to hire people with up-to-date security skills,” said Richard Buckland, Associate Professor in Computer Security, Cybercrime and Cyberterror at UNSW, and director of the new UNSW Security Engineering Lab.

“This partnership will help drive the pipeline of expertise needed to support Australia’s growing digital economy,” he added.

“But it will also build Australia's capability for teaching security engineering, establishing and sharing an up-to-date curriculum, and raising the bar for cyber security across the nation.”