CYNET (Academic Sector)

Location: Cyprus

Description: CYNET-CSIRT team continuously enhances its cybersecurity skills on cutting-edge technologies and state-of-the-art techniques, through exchange of knowledge and enrichment of experience through established international collaborations with other Europeans actors, such as CSIRTs and cybersecurity teams, inter alia. The training programmes are based upon the following key principles: a) Directly supporting the CYNET-CSIRT capability enhancement strategy; b) Tailored to specific stakeholder groups based on their role within its ecosystem; c) Learning is experiential and incorporates real life examples and simulations of real environments; d) Focused on critical and essential education required for the operation of the CYNET-CSIRT’s core activities: to deter, detect and respond to computer security incidents. Training courses and materials are tailored to common training needs and identified learning preferences, including but not limited to table top cybersecurity exercises, covering incident response, threat intelligence analysis, threat and incident information sharing, inter alia.

Business Motivation: CYNET-CSIRT provides incident response and security services to all Academic Institutions, Research Institutes and educational networks that are members of the Cyprus Research & Academic Network (CYNET). Among others, it provides early warning, alerts, announcements, and dissemination of information to its constituency and relevant parties regarding risks and incidents to achieve broad understanding of cross sectoral threats. This is accomplished by acting as an intermediary and offering, when required, technical advice leading to the resolution of the incident. Thus, the aim is to educate its members about the effects of cyber threats and cyber-crime through adaptive and proactive training programmes with the use of new training delivery methods that rely on cyber-ranges and realistic cybersecurity training and exercise scenarios.