Durning the ‘Safer Internet Day’ on the 7th of January the ‘Cyber Estafette’ initiated by Geef IT Door was launched. Durning the ‘Cyper Estafette’ cyber security experts are teaching students their professional knowledge to interest them for a career in ICT, and to become for example an ethical hacker or a cyber security specialist. Secretary of State Klaas Dijkhoff (Ministry of Security and Justice) gave the signal to start at the Newmancollega in Breda by giving a lecture to make students aware of online security. 

CIODINL, Nederland ICT and ECP | Platform for the Informatie Society expect to reach a thousand students. The ‘Cyper Estafette’ is part of the national campaign ‘Geef IT Door’ with the objective to let shrink the shortage of qualified ICT skilled people on the labour market. The ‘Cyber Estafette’ is partly supported by the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security. 

Crash course hacking

Secretary of State Mr. Dijkhoff hands over the baton to five inspirational experts who have earned their traces within the field of cyber security. One of them is Ronald Verbeek, Director of CIO Platform Nederland. Also Jaya Baloo (KPN), Chris van ’t Hof (Tek Tok Late Night), Ronald Prins (Fox-IT Security) and Anouk Vos (Revnext and President Women in Cyber Security) will give lectures on various Dutch schools. The student will experience how vulnerable information is nowadays and why digital security is so important. They also will experience a crash course hacking. 

The demand of IT specialists

Together with the increase of digitalization of society, cyber crime also increases. In some EU Member States computer crime transcends traditional crime in size. The demand for cyber security specialists is increasing rapidly. However, research shows the interest of youngsters for a job in ICT stays behind. One of the measures to stimulate this interest are public-private projects, like the campaign ‘Geef IT Door’. 

‘Geef IT Door’ 

The national campaign ‘Geef IT Door’ offers since 2014 guest lectures given by ICT professionals at secondary schools. The professionals show the students why a career in ICT is a good choice, bases on their own experiences. ‘Geef IT Door’ connects the professionals to a school in their own region and provide them with a toolkit, including necessary tools for a successful guest lecture. Besides guest lectures about ICT and programming they recently added two new themes to the package: Cyber Security and Big Data. ‘Geef IT Door’ is initiated by CIO Platform Nederland, DINL, Nederland ICT and ECP | Platform for the Information Society. And is also supported by CA-ICT, Dutch digital delta, the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security and the European eSkills for jobs campaign 2016. 

Safer Internet Day

Safer Internet Day is a yearly event, organized in about one hundred countries, to remind children and youngsters of secure and responsible usage of online technologies and mobile phones. This is a project of the European Commission (Better Internet for Kids, DG CONNECT) and is being coordinated by Insafe, the European Network of Safer Internet Centers. Within the Netherlands veiliginternetten.nl, the ‘Expertisebureau Online Kindermisbruik’ (Expert agency for online child abuse) and Mediawijzer.net support the Safer Internet Center.

More information: www.saferinternetcenter.nl/saferinternetday2017