Speech - Opening remarks by Ms Low Khah Gek, CEO/ITE at the Cyber Security Lab Opening Ceremony, held on Wednesday, 30 March 2022 at 1600 hours

 Dr Janil Puthucheary

Senior Minister of State at Ministry of Communications & Information, and Ministry of Health

Mr Wong Choon Bong

Director/Strategic Resources and Policy Office

Cyber Security Agency of Singapore

Mr Breyvan Tan

Managing Director, Wissen

Mr Francis Thangasamy

Managing Director, Lumen Technologies Singapore

Mr Serge Woon

Technical Director, ReaQta

Mr Ngair Teow Hin

CEO, SecureAge

Mr Jason Kong

Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder (Technology), TOFFS Technologies

Industry Partners

ITE colleagues and students

Ladies and Gentlemen

Introduction

1. Earlier this month, at the Committee of Supply debate, MCI highlighted Singapore’s and Singaporeans’ growing adoption and reliance on digital technology as well as the growing need to address rapidly evolving digital threats and cyber security risks.

2. Cyberattacks can disrupt business operations, damage virtual assets such as systems hosted on the cloud, impair essential services and ruin digital infrastructure.

ITE Graduates for the Cyber Security Industry

3. Given the increasing emphasis on identifying cyber risks and countering cyberattacks, the cybersecurity industry has become a fast growing sector. ITE students are keen to enrol in cybersecurity courses, acquire relevant skills and join this industry. Our students possess a natural flair for working in the digital, cyber world. We witnessed just now in the ‘Capture the Flag’ activity that ITE students’ ‘hacker’ spirit and digital-native dexterity enable them to be highly ingenuous and effective. We can harvest their talents and train them to become the future talent pipeline for the cybersecurity industry.   

4. ITE has 1,700 students in the Higher Nitec in Cyber and Network Security course and 60 WSDip trainees hired and working at various companies while pursuing their Work-Study Diploma in Cybersecurity and Forensics.

Industry Partnership and Support

5. ITE counts on the support of employers and industry partners, not just to provide internship and WSDip opportunities, but also to update and refresh our curriculum and training resources so that our students will acquire the latest set of skills needed by the industry.

6. This newly revamped Cyber Security Lab which emulates the next generation Security Operations Centre has the expert inputs of CSA as well as resource support from four industry partners: Lumen Technologies, ReaQta, SecureAge and TOFFS Technologies:

   • CSA enables our ITE staff to be apprised of the updated cybersecurity standards and emerging skills-sets needed by the industry.

   • Lumen Technologies enables authentic learning for our students by providing cyber-threat intelligence data feeds for them to counter real threats.

   • ReaQta provides students access to the powerful, fast and easy-to-use ReaQta-Hive to search for threat data inside IT infrastructure and perform data-mining tasks aimed at uncovering dormant threats.

   • SecureAge has made available their Endpoint Security Operation Management for our students.

   • Toffs Technologies is providing students a 10-week pre-internship training and thereafter, 11 of them will be selected for deployment to SMEs for their 6-month internship and work on Asset Based Cyber Defence (ABCD). 

Conclusion

7. On behalf of ITE, I would like to thank SMS Janil for gracing today’s opening of this Cyber Security Lab. With this revamped training facility and updated resources from our industry partners, ITE graduates will be better equipped with relevant skills, sought after by employers and better positioned to build good careers in the cybersecurity industry.

Thank you.