Minsait and SIA create with the University of Malaga the Chair of Cyberintelligence
Teodomiro López, rector of the University of Málaga (UMA), and Roberto Espina, CEO of SIA - Indra's cybersecurity company through which Minsait provides services in this field - have just signed a collaboration agreement for the creation of the Chair of Cyberintelligence.
Aimed at students of the UMA School of Computer Engineering, the UMA centre to which the chair is attached aims to promote specialised training in cyberintelligence, improving students' access to an increasingly digitised labour market and in one of the areas that is demanding more professionals.
The chair was created with two fundamental objectives: to promote the dissemination of knowledge in cyberintelligence, a process that consists of gathering information to identify and analyse threats in order to better understand the adversary and mitigate possible attacks in cyberspace; and to promote research focused on the implementation of projects that develop methods, tools and procedures to obtain valuable information from attackers and, thus, detect suspicious activity more quickly.
In this case, postgraduates and doctoral students, the main objective of the chair, will have the opportunity to carry out their work with a company, SIA, which will allow them to learn about the company's perspective on this work.
In addition, the chair will focus on three themes:
- Disinformation, with the definition of methods to facilitate the detection, monitoring and mitigation of disinformation campaigns.
- Counterintelligence, with the specification of techniques and tools for the analysis of counterintelligence activities
- Exposed credentials, with the research and definition of mechanisms for the early identification and appropriate treatment of exposed credentials to reduce exposure time.
The agreement also contemplates other complementary activities, such as the holding of specific courses, informative conferences or seminars, collaboration in masters' degrees, the granting of scholarships or support for doctoral theses and research work.
With a duration of two years, extendable by express agreement of both parties, the chair will be located in the Ada Byron research building on the Teatinos campus of the University of Malaga.
Specialisation, experience and the labour market
The signing of the collaboration agreement took place in the Rector's Hall of the Rectorate of the University of Malaga, where Roberto Espina declared: ‘As the digitalisation of companies and society increases, the cybersecurity risks are greater and the demand for specialised talent is higher. With this agreement, SIA is committed to sharing its experience and innovative capacity with the students of the UMA, to accompany them in their training process and to allow them to learn first-hand about the latest advances in cyber intelligence’.
The rector of the University of Malaga, for his part, expressed his satisfaction at the commitment and trust in a public university to carry out this project and to do so through a chair, ‘which is the perfect vehicle for this’. ‘This will be the beginning of many other successful collaborations,’ he said.
The event was also attended by Francisco Javier Cano, head of the Delivery Network Minsait Centre in Malaga, and Santiago Huertas, Director of Talent at Minsait, a company that will play a leading role in the development of both teaching and research activities. ‘Our responsibility as a company in the field of information technologies and digital transformation’, he said, “is to collaborate with the educational world, contributing our experience and expert vision to the training process of the professionals of the future and improving their options in the labour market”.
Also present from the University of Málaga were the professor and director of the NICS Lab research group, Javier López, who will be the director of this Chair in Cyberintelligence, as well as the director of the School of Computer Engineering, Manuel Enciso, and another NICS Lab professor, Rodrigo Román.
‘It is more necessary than ever to do research in cyberintelligence, because reacting and defending ourselves against cyberattacks is no longer enough; the fundamental issue has become anticipating them and trying to mitigate them in advance’, concluded Javier López, who, as director of the chair, was in charge of explaining the objectives pursued with this collaboration agreement.