“Today’s cyber security leaders can’t limit themselves to the role of enforcer. First and foremost, they need to focus on building a resilient organisational structure and culture,” opens Yuri Bobbert. In practice, this underscores a growing need for soft and managerial skills among leaders in the IT world. “Fostering resilience among all members of an organisation requires paying attention to the human element and responding to it successfully.”
Focus on soft skills
“This is precisely why our programme focuses on these soft skills,” he continues. “While purely technical skills are central to more tech-oriented programmes, they are less of a focus for us. We have maintained a strong focus on governance and leadership: areas in which we, as a management school, have a distinct expertise. We also serve a lot of very technical-oriented managers that acknowledge they need to develop their soft skills like convincing, persuasion, negotiating, and presenting.”
The Executive Master in IT Risk and Cybersecurity programme, a specialisation within the Executive IT Management programme, is open to candidates with a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree plus five years of relevant experience. It therefore attracts IT professionals in leadership positions. “For example, IT managers from major players in the Antwerp port area, financial industry and petrochemical cluster, as well as consultants or people who approach the topic from an HR or financial perspective,” Yuri explains.
Students who follow our track typically gain skills and capabilities for building a solid cybersecurity investment case and developing a roadmap with the right resources like people and money. They learn to define governance structures to manage and maintain an effective security organisation. To understand risk management practices, students learn how to quantify risks and develop cost-effective programmes. Next to these skills they learn how to negotiate, manage incidents, and inspire their teams with the right leadership.
Knowledge sharing as a central goal
The Master’s programme culminates in a research project. “The students dive deeply into a specific risk or security topic and truly become experts. The knowledge and insights generated over the years are made maximally accessible to the public by AMS. To maximise the impact of the research, we allow our top students to present their findings at sector meetings across Europe and make the theses, about 40 annually, publicly available afterward. This demonstrates that knowledge sharing and valorisation are central to us.
A concrete example of such a project is an extensive glossary that a student compiled last year as his graduation project. “This is essentially an atlas of all existing concepts within cybersecurity. For cyber professionals, it provides a chance to understand how the current world is structured. Once again, this shows how we aim to advance the field,” says Yuri.
The two-year Executive Master’s programme has already produced around 100 alumni. “Each contributes to strengthening the cybersecurity landscape,” Yuri continues. “Accordingly, membership of the Cyber Security Coalition is highly valuable for the AMS. “It allowed us to connect with a significant portion of our target audience for this programme. Finally, as a member, we can better understand what everyone else is doing and the issues they face, and sow the seeds for new collaborations,” Bobbert concludes.