Cloud security training gets boost in the GCC

Cloud has taken greater prominence in the current work-from-home environment. However, many organisations in the region find themselves tested by the challenge of securing cloud applications.

Cybersecurity training organisation SANS Institute has announced the availability of cloud security and certification training courses for the Middle East region. SANS’ cloud security curriculum focuses on the growing threats into the cloud by providing training, certification, research, and community initiatives to help security professionals, the company says.

Research firm IDC anticipates an increase in security spending as enforced working-from-home practices expose corporate networks and computing devices to new levels of cybersecurity risk. IDC believes the fallout from the COVID-19 outbreak will expose new security loopholes that cyber miscreants will exploit. As a result, data breaches are expected to become more widespread, exacerbated by the notoriously insecure habits of remote workers.

Read: Kaspersky avails cybersecurity training online as Covid-19 restricts in-person instruction

Securing the cloud workloads used to perform work-related tasks has become extremely important and a failure to do so poses a significant threat to the organisation – operationally, financially, and reputationally.

“With this huge proliferation of the regional public cloud, often from unsecured connections and networks, the incidence of phishing malware and threat actor activity has also vigorously picked up. We believe the availability of online cloud security training and certification courses from SANS Institute will go a long way in helping to counter these blind spots and increase the level of suitable skills,” explained Ned Baltagi, managing director, Middle East and Africa at SANS Institute.

The cloud security training courses in 2020 target those with roles of Cloud Security Manager, Cloud Security Architecture, Cloud Security Engineer, Cloud Security Analyst, and the DevOps Professional. SANS cloud security courses are also segregated by competency levels and are classified as Baseline, Foundational, Core and Specialisation.