• The aim of the collaboration agreement is to promote the specialisation of UMA students and foster their professional opportunities in a labour market that demands a response to the challenges of digitalisation, such as cybersecurity.

 

• The chair, aimed at students of the School of Computer Engineering, will offer specialised training and promote research to detect suspicious activity in relation to cyberthreats in a more agile way.

 

• Cyberintelligence consists of gathering information to identify and analyse threats in order to better understand the adversary and mitigate possible attacks in cyberspace.

 

Madrid, 31 October 2024.- Teodomiro López, rector of the University of Málaga (UMA), and Roberto Espina, CEO of SIA - Indra's cybersecurity company through which Minsait provides services in this field - have just signed a collaboration agreement for the creation of the Chair of Cyberintelligence.

 

Aimed at students of the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Informática, which is the UMA centre to which the chair is attached, its purpose is to promote specialised training in cyber-intelligence, improving students' access to an increasingly digitalised labour market and in one of the areas that is demanding the most professionals.

 

The chair was created with two fundamental objectives: to promote the dissemination of knowledge in cyberintelligence, a process that consists of gathering information to identify and analyse threats in order to better understand the adversary and mitigate possible attacks in cyberspace; and to promote research focused on the implementation of projects that develop methods, tools and procedures to obtain valuable information from attackers and, thus, detect suspicious activity more quickly. In this case, postgraduates and doctoral students, the main objective of the chair, will have the opportunity to carry out their work with a company, SIA, which will allow them to learn about the company's perspective on this work.

 

In addition, the Chair will focus on three themes:

 

• Disinformation, with the definition of methods to facilitate the detection, monitoring and mitigation of disinformation campaigns

 

• Counterintelligence, with the specification of techniques and tools for the analysis of counter-intelligence activities

 

• Exposed credentials, with the research and definition of mechanisms for the early identification and appropriate treatment of exposed credentials to reduce exposure time.

 

The agreement also contemplates other complementary activities, such as the holding of specific courses, informative conferences or seminars, collaboration in masters, the granting of scholarships or support for doctoral theses and research work.

 

With a duration of two years, which may be extended by express agreement of both parties, the chair will be located in the Ada Byron research building on the Teatinos campus of the University of Malaga.

 

Specialisation, experience and the labour market

 

The signing of the collaboration agreement took place yesterday in the Rector's Hall of the Rectorate of the University of Malaga, where Roberto Espina declared that ‘the greater the digitalisation of companies and society, the greater the cybersecurity risks and the greater the demand for specialised talent. With this agreement, SIA is committed to sharing its experience and innovative capacity with the students of the UMA, to accompany them in their training process and so that they can learn first-hand about the latest advances in cyber-intelligence’.

 

The rector of the University of Malaga, for his part, expressed his satisfaction at the commitment and trust in a public university to carry out this project and to do so through a chair, ‘which is the perfect vehicle for this’. ‘This will be the beginning of many other successful collaborations,’ he said.

 

The event was also attended by Francisco Javier Cano, head of the Delivery Network Minsait Centre in Malaga, and Santiago Huertas, Director of Talent at Minsait, a company that will play a leading role in the development of both teaching and research activities. ‘Our responsibility as a company in the field of information technologies and digital transformation’, they said, “is to collaborate with the educational world, contributing our experience and expert vision to the training process of the professionals of the future and improving their options in the labour market”.

 

Also present from the University of Málaga were the director of the School of Computer Science, Manuel Enciso; the director of the Office of Innovation and Technological Cooperation that the UMA has in the Málaga Tech Park, Professor Javier López, and the professor of the Department of Languages and Computer Science, Rodrigo Román.

 

‘It is more necessary than ever to carry out research in cyber-intelligence’, concluded Javier López, who was in charge of explaining the objectives that will be pursued with this collaboration agreement.