DICT Secretary Ivan John Uy. (Photo courtesy of DICT)
MANILA – The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) will launch short-term courses and long-term programs on cybersecurity in 2023 to help build the country’s cybersecurity workforce.
In a press briefing in Malacañang on Tuesday, DICT Secretary Ivan John Uy said these programs would include short courses that would allow for rapid deployment of cybersecurity professionals and long-term programs by partnering with educational institutions and government agencies in charge of education.
“We will be launching some programs on that come 2023. I will not announce it yet but it will be a very interesting program on building up our STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) capacity even from the school at a very young age,” Uy said.
To date, he said the Philippines only has around 200 certified cybersecurity experts, or those holding Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) certifications, and only about 30 percent are in the country, with the rest working overseas.
“Ang nangyayari kasi is marami tayong talented na technical people, pero hindi sila nagqua-qualify for the jobs because wala silang credentials (What is happening is we have many talented technical people, but they don’t qualify for the jobs because they don’t have the credentials),” he said.
In response, the DICT is working with large technology companies such as CISCO, Oracle, Intel, and Microsoft to help provide certification programs to Filipinos.
“Some of them are three- or six-months certifications tapos ang ginagawa namin, iniimbita namin itong mga technical people na mag-enroll (and then what we do is we invite technical people to enroll). Either subsidized or free. And from there, we provide them with a scholarship so they can take the certification,” he said.
Aside from the current global demand for cybersecurity experts -- with an estimated two to three million job vacancies worldwide -- he said local business process management companies, financial institutions, banks, and the rest of the business sector are looking to hire more cybersecurity experts.
“And that's just for cybersecurity. Napakarami pang iba (There are so many other technical fields),” he said.
To address the long-term need for cybersecurity experts, he said the DICT is building partnerships with the Department of Education (DepEd), Commission on Higher Education (CHED), Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), and state universities and colleges to develop more courses in the area.
Early in December, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) released its “National Cybersecurity Talent Workforce Assessment of the Philippines” which laid out the current lack of credentialed or certified and experienced cybersecurity workforce in the country.
Commissioned by USAID’s Better Access and Connectivity (BEACON) Activity from IBM Consulting Services, the study proposed several solutions to the workforce gap. (PNA)
