Jakarta. Chinese tech giant Huawei has affirmed its support towards Indonesia's digital transformation, be it from establishing an academy for digital talents or ramping up the government's cybersecurity skills.

The company has officially opened the Huawei Asean Academy Engineering Institute in Jakarta.

Huawei claims the academy is their largest and most comprehensive ICT training and certification center in Asia Pacific. According to Huawei Indonesia chairman Jacky Chen, its establishment will help Indonesia address its digital talent gap and propel the country to enter the world's top five economies in 2045.

"We are committed to keep strengthening that commitment through the Huawei ASEAN Academy in Indonesia. Our target is to develop the competence of 100 thousand digital talents in Indonesia over the next five years through a multiple-helix synergy model with various parties," Jacky, who also serves as the academy's president, said in an official statement on Monday.

The academy comprises business, technical, and engineering colleges with 100 trainers, over 3,000 courses, and more than 100 mirroring environments. Aside from attending theory classes, students can take practical on-site works, certifications, and exams.

"It also adopts the modular and reusable training field design, supporting training for 80 persons at the same time. It is estimated that 1,500 to 2,000 ICT talents training and certification programs can be completed each year,” the academy's dean Yangdonghai said.

Boosting Cybersecurity

Aside from nurturing digital talents, Huawei is also as fired up when it comes to fortifying the electronic-based government systems (SPBE) against potential cyberthreats. Huawei recently teamed up with the National Cyber and Encryption Agency (BSSN) to hold a workshop on BSSN's cybersecurity system, the Honeynet, and its role in the SPBE.

The digital adoption nationwide has opened doors for cyberattacks.

BSSN's Honeynet recorded a total 246,432,010 cyberattacks and 190,599 malware attacks in 2020. These attacks are spread across 71 points which comprise the government, critical national information infrastructures, and academic sectors. This alarming figure calls for the need to boost cybersecurity skills within the government. 

“The information security factor is one important focus in carrying out the SPBE program. The security standards for SPBE constitute application, national data center, data and information, services connection systems, and network security," BSSN's identification and detection deputy Dono Indarto said.

"This is the foundation by which the BSSN continues to increase the quality of cyber talents within the government, whether in the central government or among regional governments, in order to minimize the disruption caused by information security threats towards the implementation of SPBE,” he added.

Likewise, Huawei Indonesia spokesman Ken Qi also sees the importance of boosting cybersecurity.

"For this reason, Huawei Indonesia is very enthusiastic about supporting the BSSN’s efforts to increase the literacy and capability of stakeholders with regard to cybersecurity, including Honeynet as a serious undertaking to detect and analyze cyber-threats as early as possible,” Ken said.