BUiD Cybersecurity Academy
The British University in Dubai (BUiD) was established in 2003 as the region’s first research-based postgraduate university. BUiD offers a unique not-for-profit high education brand focused on academic research designed to contribute to technological innovation and socioeconomic development. It offers programs in business, education, engineering, and informatics. As a research-based institution, BUiD prides itself on its dedication to nurturing learners while building skills and aptitudes that benefit governments, businesses, and communities globally.
The team at BUiD aims to advance cybersecurity innovation through world class research, teaching excellence, industrial expertise, and training capacity.
To improve cybersecurity talent in the UAE, the university seeks to increase the number of fully prepared graduates entering the cybersecurity workforce by providing hands-on education, simulated training, and certifications for students and professionals.
Education Partnership
Project Ares is proud to partner with BUiD and to work with their cyber workforce development team to provide cyber practice labs for students participating in a Certified Cyber Incident Response Manager (C-CIRM) course taught by our shared teaching partner, Phase 2 Advantage.The lab component for the C-CIRM course features Project Ares Battle Room 8- Network Traffic Analysis, Battle Room 9- Forensics , and Battle Room 11- System Security Analyst. The students in these initial courses come from several BUiD regional alliances including: Cyberani Solutions, Raytheon and CyberX.
The C-CIRM course supports the work defined by the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) Cybersecurity Workforce Framework . Specifically, the C-CIRM training program teaches the skills and attributes needed for students to become cybersecurity first responders who are the first line of defense against cyber-attacks. The program’s goal is to help address a critical shortage of cybersecurity professionals with the skills required to defend against increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks.
Incident responders fundamentally react to and mitigate incidents that can potentially impact a network, business, and operational processes in a negative way. However, incident response can also involve quite a bit more, like being preemptive, predictive, and having an intelligence-oriented mindset. The goal of incident response is to mitigate incidents but also to learn from incidents to strengthen and increase organizations’ security postures. Security professionals review strategic recommendations, playbooks, lessons learned to consider how they can incorporate those elements into future programs, policy, and training. By developing preemptive v. reactive stances, organizations become dynamic, integrated, and prepared for the future.
The C-CIRM course begins at a high level and addresses specific areas of the incident response process. This ensure that students holistically understand the discipline from a broad perspective, have a solid foundational knowledge, and understand the roles and processes involved in an incident response team.
This allows students to be prepared and confident when they walk into these job roles later while also maintaining the flexibility to understand that this is a highly fluid and dynamic discipline where innovation happens at the cross-sections of disciplines.
Employers may not have six-months to train individuals to get them up to speed. They need them to be high value on day one. Certifications help new employees walk into a job environment on day one and say, ‘This is what I know.’
Michael I. Kaplan, Phase2 Advantage
The Training Course
The C-CIRM course takes 40 hours to complete and BUiD uses high intensity immersion over 5 days to help students prepare to take their certificate examinations. This course teaches students critical technical skills, including networks, threat impacts, tools to help mitigate incidents and strengthen networks, malware analysis, remediation and eradication techniques, etc. Additionally, they learn how to communicate with ancillary team members, work shoulder to shoulder with others, communicate effectively in report writing and when offering recommendations to management.
BUiD’s partner instructors from Phase 2 Advantage are experienced cyber professionals who explain course content to students and answer their questions by bringing their real-world know-how into the conversation. The shared practical experiences and stories help students bridge the gap between cybersecurity theory and practice. The course focus is not only on the tools but also the tips, tricks, and deeper insights that these experts bring to the table.
The shared practical experiences and stories help students bridge the gap between cybersecurity theory and practice.
“This course offered a lot of valuable information on a high level that was very focused on the realities that cybersecurity professionals are facing right now in 2022. It’s not a generic course that focuses on general information only and I think that’s the key difference between this course and others that I’ve experienced.”
A BUiD Student
For more information visit www.buid.ac.ae
BUiD’s partnership with Project Ares has proven to be a valuable differentiator for this C-CIRM course.
When given the opportunity to work with real tools in safe virtual machine environments during the course, students become proficient, competent, and confident in using cybersecurity tools. They also begin to envision how they could fit into an Incident Responder role in the workplace which is directly aligned with BUiD’s goal of delivering graduates ready to work in the cybersecurity field.
