The Positive Education Program To Help Professors Coach Future Specialists

Lack of specialists is the major problem that the Russian information security market is facing today. Every year, over 250 graduates start their career in the field, which is far less than needed. Positive Technologies alone opens 100 positions every year.

The Company’s experts have developed an educational program Positive Education to assist universities in coaching future information security specialists. The program was presented by Sergey Gordeychik, the company’s CTO, at Positive Hack Days 2012 in Moscow.

“At present, companies have to outbit specialists from competitors or train novices on their own, sometimes “from scratch”. The Positive Education program is aimed at training competent specialists at universities,” comments Sergey Gordeychik, CTO of Positive Technologies. “Young people who graduate from technical schools today are usually quite good at Maths, but lack practical experience, so they have to pull up their knowledge at work”.

In Sergey’s opinion, the market expects future employees to have solid knowledge and excellent skills in information technologies, which includes knowledge of network technologies, operating systems, DBMS, applications and web applications; understanding of security mechanisms and their implementation in certain systems; skills of security assessment; practical experience in any of the special fields (development, support, project design, analysis); skills of documentation development (Unified System for Design Documentation, National State Standard).

Besides, Sergey Gordeychik emphasized a mistake common for many universities: they tend to focus primarily on training specialists in information security standards, while the market cries out for system engineers, web application specialists, experts in antivirus and system security, security assessment specialists, system analysis and developers in the information security field.

Self-reliant development of practical courses tends to be a challenging task for Russian universities due to the lack of technical and human resources. Moreover, hardware infrastructure and software require significant financial investments. Positive Technologies is ready to provide all necessary components for the courses to be developed, including the assistance of company’s specialists who have practical experience in the field.

Positive Education is composed of stands with virtual infrastructures, educational software products, materials for seminars, step-by-step description of labs, and support and master classes for professors. Positive Technologies specialists have already developed workshops on the following topics: Tool-aided security assessment, Penetration testing, and Web application security analysis.

“We encourage all universities that find our program interesting to join us,” says Sergey Gordeychik.

So far, the program covers 15 Russian universities:

· Saint Petersburg State University of Economics and Management (ENGECON)

· Far-Eastern University of Means of Communications (FESUMC)

· Udmurt State University USU

· Novosibirsk State University of Economics and Management (NSUEM)

· National Nuclear Research University MEPHI

· Moscow State University (MSU)

· Tomsk State University, Chair of Innovations Management (TSU)

· Tomsk State University of Control Systems and Radio Electronics (TUSUR)

· Institute of Business Security of Moscow Energy Institute (SIBB NRI MEI)

· Chair of Automated Systems of Information Processing and Management of Omsk State Technical University (OSTU)

· Moscow State Technical University named after N. Bauman (MSTU)

· Kuban State Technical University (KubSTU)

· MIET National Research University

· Voronezh Institute of Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs

· Far-Eastern Federal University (FEFU)

Positive Education is not the only educational initiative of Positive Technologies. Earlier, the its specialists gave seminars and special courses of study for students of technical universities and organized a series of free webinars on topical issues of information security. Besides, as a part of the PHDays 2012 forum program, Positive Technologies offered a competition for young scientists called Young School. The high level of the competition is confirmed by the fact that all works of the finalists were approved for release in the Information Technology Security magazine, which is in the Higher Attestation Commission list of major a reviewed scientific publication.