Australian indigenous and veteran owned technology company Willyama Services has launched a Cyber Traineeship Program to accelerate professional training and diversify the country's cyber workforce.
The unique programme has a remit to develop a cohort of indigenous, ethnically and culturally diverse, women and neurodiverse security professionals.
Federal minister for skills and training Brendan O'Connor launched the initiative in Canberra last week.
The two-year traineeship program aims to not only a celebrate training at a time of skills shortages but supply the industry with a widely diverse cyber security workforce.
“It’s important to keep in mind that cyber security is as much about a knowledgeable and capable population that can spot a scam, as it is about high-end skills to run systems and security."
"The highest walls and the thickest doors don’t work if the door is left open or we give the keys to random strangers,” O’Connor said.
This two-year traineeship program will be offered to 50 people, who will be placed directly into paid entry-level roles.
The most recent labour market update from Jobs and Skills Australia advised that ICT security specialists, database and systems administrators, and analysts, remain in the top 20 occupations in demand.
Willyama’s dedicated cybersecurity division, was launched last May after several years working as the Defence Industry Security Program (DISP) cyber providers, servicing the defence industry supply chain.
“The more digitally literate we become, the better off we are as a nation. It is imperative if we want to meet our Closing the Gaps targets, we must redouble our efforts,” O’Connor said.
The programme is funded through the Australian Government’s $60 million Cyber Security Skills Partnership Innovation Fund (round 2), delivered by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, of which 18 organisations were successfully awarded last November.
Meanwhile, the department is also supporting indigenous Australian university students under a new internship program devised by the Australian Space Agency (ASA), NASA and he National Indigenous Space Academy (NISA).
The venture will support five students studying in STEM fields travel to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA JPL) in California for a 10-week full-time summer internship program.
The initiative forges pathway for indigenous students to participate in NASA JPL projects such as robotics, robot perception control, path planning and Artificial Intelligence.
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