Cyber Security Education and Training: Delivering industry relevant education and skills via Degree Apprenticeships

The rise of Digital Transformation, global pandemics, and AI, have made Cyber skills crucial in today’s world. Organisation flexibility can only be achieved when they have a strong foundation of Cyber professionals that can look after vulnerabilities and protect their systems. A multitude of evidence suggests that the economy is being held back due to a skills gap, particularly in the Cyber Security discipline. In seeking to reduce this gap, the UK government has extended a long established ‘apprenticeship’ programme to include degrees. Higher Education Degree Apprenticeships offer a cost-effective route for employers to upskill their staff and for apprentices to access free education (and a degree) whilst being paid. Each of the Degree Apprenticeships has an associated framework that defines core learning requirements – devised and created by a collaborative effort of industry and academia. How this framework is implemented however is very much up to individual institutions.

This paper presents an implementation of the Cyber Security Analyst degree apprenticeship undertaken at a UK Institution. Amongst the first in the UK to operationalise the standard, the approach has pragmatically dealt with a wide range of issues to create an academically rigorous yet commercially viable solution for industry. The paper presents the approach, demonstrates the academic rigor through mapping to industry-accepted standards, and discusses the collaborative role of the employer and University in providing a holistic and complete learning experience. The paper concludes by offering a critical discussion on challenges and opportunities and suggests ways employers and professional bodies can collaborate further with Higher Education in developing Degree Apprenticeships that will only be about skills, but also lifelong learning.