Minister Feetham last week visited the Gibraltar Digital Skills Academy where school students from Bayside, Westside and Prior Park are competing in the 1st round of CyberCenturion X.

CyberCenturion is a national cyber education initiative for 12-18 year-olds in the UK and UK overseas territories. The program is designed to excite, educate and motivate students to pursue further education and careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and cybersecurity, which helps to build a diverse talent pool to supply the UK’s workforce needs.

Its objective is to deliver an inspirational competitive education experience, which provides:

• practical learning about cyber in the real world
• development of technical and employability skills that are useful in any industry
• motivation to pursue Cyber/STEM subjects and careers

The competition consists of students having to configure and secure two Linux based operating systems. Linux administrators are a well sort skill set within the technology sector and such competitions help to expose and upskill students.

There are 5 local teams competing in the competition comprised of 16 students, most of which are girls. The students have been attending weekly training sessions, which are delivered by industry professionals. The Head of School (Cyber) at the Academy is Mr J Cruz, who has been spearheading the initiative and leading the sessions.

ENDS