Swinburne gets funding for cyber security teaching

Swinburne University of Technology will spend $1 million from the CSIRO’s Data61 on an intake of students to focus on critical infrastructure security.

Professor Yang Xiang.

Announcing the collaboration, Swinburne said the program is a response to the needs of partners such as Amazon, DXC, ASTA and Sysbox.

The program is designed to address security vulnerabilities in manufacturing software, smart manufacturing, control system management, and manufacturing AI.

It’s being funded under the CSIRO’s “building national cyber security capabilities for digital transformation in manufacturing” initiative, and the university said it will “bring together a multidisciplinary team to train next generation graduate students within industry.”

As well as its facilities, Swinburne’s research team will bring expertise in manufacturing and digital transformation.

The partners will provide 17 mentors from Swinburne, Monash University, UNSW’s ADFA and James Cook University, together with partner organisations DXC, Amazon, ASTA and Sysbox, which are contributing $600,000 in addition to the CSIRO funding.

The university said industrial expertise represented in the collaboration will include “manufacturing, cyber security, human interaction, software engineering, entrepreneurship and commercialisation.”

“It is important that the next generation across all industries, including manufacturing, are skilled in cyber security – including network and system security, data analytics, AI, blockchain, distributed systems and networking,” Swinburne’s dean of digital research, professor Yang Xiang, said in a statement.

“Soft skills and cybersecurity awareness will also be a focus for the next generation graduates.”