KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia is one of the top three ASEAN countries that are expected to contribute 75 per cent of cybersecurity services market share by 2025, said Communication and Multimedia Minister Gobind Singh Deo.
He said with the fast-growing opportunities from digital economy which included the phenomenal growth of the cybersecurity industry, the government has envisioned forward looking strategies including to continue to produce high-income talent to elevate national productivity.
“(Other strategies) is to develop Malaysia as a leading country within ASEAN region to robust resources for advanced cybersecurity analytics and forensic resources and to successfully enhance national cybersecurity preparedness to secure digital economy growth,” he said.
Gobind was speaking at the launch of Asia Pacific University (APU)’s Cybersecurity Talent Zone, today.
The Cybersecurity Talent Zone features a fully-functional Security Operations Centre (SOC) that allows students to have hands-on cybersecurity operations experience.
In the initiative, APU partnered with the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) and industry players which include infrastructure and services from Malaysia, United Kingdom and France.
Meanwhile, Gobind said, according to a Dec 2017 LinkedIn report, said 21 per cent of Malaysia’s cybersecurity workforce are women compared to 11 per cent in the United States.
“The overall situation though - is that the ‘funnel’ of new talent is too small and not enough to sustain and support the growing demand of our digital economy,” he said.
Therefore, he said Malaysia’s focus would include empowerment programmes such as promoting Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) graduates towards cybersecurity as a career as well as to grow Artificial Intelligence (AI) knowledge and capability.
On the setting up of the Cybersecurity Talent Zone, Gobind Singh said the initiative was timely as the cybersecurity talent demand in Malaysia would hit 10,500 by 2020 as reported by Frost & Sullivan’s recent digital talent study.
He added that as cyber threats continue to grow rapidly, it was necessary for graduates to have access to and operate in real-life environment to harness skills in proactive security monitoring and incident responses at the SOC. - Bernama