CaixaBank and La Salle-URL, chosen by the European Commission to define the future of training for cybersecurity professionals

• The bank and the university, together with international organisations, make up the REWIRE project, which is financed by Erasmus+ and is intended to lay out a possible training itinerary for specialists in the field of cybersecurity.
• The project participants have prepared a document containing a framework of skills with a description of the various relevant work profiles and knowledge, as well as an analysis of the labour market and company demand.
• The consortium is made up of a total of 25 European universities, entities and companies that have collaborated to help academia meet the needs of business.

CaixaBank has launched, together with La Salle Campus Barcelona, a founding member of the Universitat Ramon Llull, and a group of universities and organisations from the European Union, a project to define an international framework of skills for future cybersecurity professionals. It is called the REWIRE project, which has been chosen by the European Union to receive funding from the Erasmus+ programme. The results of this research will help to define the training itineraries, skills and competences that students studying cybersecurity must have to further their careers. REWIRE is endorsed by the Catalan Cybersecurity Agency, which is an active part of the project's Expert Advisory Board.

The goal is for this study to identify key stakeholders from all possible perspectives and areas, as well as to provide an interactive and publicly available tool that contains the necessary career information and guidance for professionals and students who are considering a career in cybersecurity.

By incorporating both private companies and universities and institutions, the programme will help to improve job descriptions related to cybersecurity. It will also help educational institutions to improve the designs of their course offerings. Similarly, the design of this competency framework will help both students and existing professionals who need to improve their skills, get retraining or change careers.

Bridging the gap between academia and business

The report prepared by the REWIRE consortium has been presented today, 1st. January in Barcelona, at an event at the Barcelona Cybersecurity Congress (BCC), which is taking place in Hall 4 of Fira de Barcelona (Av. Joan Carles I, 64, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat). This is an international event focused on cybersecurity hold from 31 January to 2 February and organised by Fira de Barcelona and the Agència de Ciberseguretat de Catalunya. The congress addresses the need to increase security in all sectors to avoid or minimise the effects of an attack by cybercriminals.

During the session, the CyberRange initiative, an open-source platform promoted by the Catalunya Cybersecurity Agency that furthers the goals of REWIRE, will be presented to facilitate the development of cyberexercises in Catalonia with which to test the knowledge and skills gained.

This document contains a framework of specific skills, describes the various professional profiles and identifies relevant knowledge that cybersecurity specialists must have. It also analyses the labour market and labour demand in this field.

CaixaBank collaborates in the consortium as an industrial partner and ensures that the content makes sense in a real-world corporate setting. The Salle-URL is the other Spanish member of the project, and is taking part as a cybersecurity expert, leading the work package responsible for creating tools involving training and certification.

Together with them, a further 23 European universities and companies have worked on the REWIRE project, collaborating to bridge the gap between academia and business in this area. https://rewireproject.eu/

Cybersecurity, a strategic priority for CaixaBank

Cybersecurity is a priority for CaixaBank. Our strategy in this area, which, together with technical aspects, requires applying a global perspective, developing a strong interest in coordination and research and preventing human factor risks through training, and raising awareness in employees and customers. All the measures taken are consistent with the Strategic Information Security Plan, which continuously assesses our capabilities versus the best industry practices and benchmarks. ​

CaixaBank has created a cybersecurity ecosystem that has specialised equipment and advanced technological infrastructure to protect digital transactions from security incidents.  The bank invests continually in new technology in order to satisfy customer demands, guarantee their growth, adapt to emerging business needs and provide access to information around the clock. As a result, it ensures a total adaptation of the infrastructure to the needs of financial management and services to customers.

About La Salle Campus Barcelona-Universitat Ramon Llull

La Salle Campus Barcelona, a founding member of the Universitat Ramon Llull, is an internationally renowned university with more than a century of history and which provides undergraduate, master's, postgraduate, doctorate and specialised studies in Engineering, Architecture, Management, Animation & VFX, Digital Arts, Philosophy and Health Engineering, with technology and humanism as essential elements of its DNA.

Currently, it has over 5,100 students, more than 30% of whom are from as many as 90 different nationalities. The hiring rate of graduates is 96%. In its ecosystem, it has two unique innovation and research spaces: The Internet of Things Institute of Catalonia (IoTiCAT) and the future Interactive Arts & Science Laboratory (IASlab), two leading laboratories in Europe on the Internet of Things and new forms of interaction between humans, machines and virtual environments.

The Salle Campus Barcelona promotes entrepreneurship, innovation and applied research, encouraging constant interaction between students and companies. Faithful to its mission of training professionals with values that can transform society, it fosters the development of the social and humanist sensitivity of students and transversal collaborative work between their areas of knowledge. Not only is it a founding member of the Universitat Ramon Llull, the La Salle Campus Barcelona is also part of the International Association La Salle Universities (IALU) and various international networks and consortia.

La Salle is the largest global non-profit network that is specifically dedicated to education. It has more than 300 years of history and is present in 80 countries. It consists of 1,083 educational centres and 64 universities, with 1,000,000 students, 300,000 of them university students.