Cyber Competence Network (CCN) pilots, CONCORDIA, SPARTA and Cybersec4Europe contributed to the ENISA Cybersecurity Higher Education Database (CyberHEAD) with 25 entries. Thanks to this collaboration, students will have a simple-to-use comprehensive portal to help them identify an EU academic programme that suits their interest.

Crowd-sourced database for informed decisions

The Cybersecurity Higher Education Database (CyberHEAD) lists cybersecurity academic programmes in the EU, EFTA and other European countries, and provides an easy-to-access portal for students to identify a suitable cybersecurity degree.

ENISA prepared CyberHEAD to allow students make informed decisions on a variety of possibilities offered by higher education institutions in cybersecurity. The database also helps universities to attract high-quality students motivated in keeping Europe cyber-secure.

CCN pilots contribution

The CCN Pilots focused on mapping educational activities in cybersecurity within Europe since their beginning. At a pilot level, they created tools that consolidate this information and simplify access to it.

In specific, CONCORDIA designed the Map of courses and trainings for professionals, SPARTA created the Cybersecurity Study Programs map and CyberSec4Europe prepared the Cybersecurity MSc Education Survey Map.

Given the fact that collaboration is crucial for all pilots, it was natural that they shared their data with ENISA. As a result, 25 more new entries were added to the CyberHEAD database representing 20% of the current database content. “Thanks to the collaboration with the pilots, CyberHEAD has become the largest validated cybersecurity higher education database in the EU and EFTA countries” says Fabio Di Franco from ENISA.

Next steps

The cooperation among the CCN Education group and ENISA continues, in particular on the creation of the EU Cybersecurity Skills Framework. The development of a framework that would take into account the needs of the EU and each one of its Member States in the area of cybersecurity is considered an essential step towards Europe’s digital future.

CCN pilots focus their efforts in different focus groups, one of them, the CCN Education focus group. The CCN Education focus group is looking into the creation of a European Education Ecosystem for Cybersecurity to support the work of the future Network of Cyber-competence Centres, and contributes to the EU efforts in closing the cybersecurity skills gap.