The agreement was one of the main outcomes of a cybersecurity summit held in Wales this week that brought together academics from leading US and UK universities, as well as representatives from the United Nations, the US Department of Defense, Northrop Grumman, Microsoft, and IBM.
Commenting on the agreement, Marc Clement, vice chancellor of the University of Wales, said that the two universities would develop a joint training program to meet the growing demand for cybersecurity experts.
John Williams, director of MIT’s Geospatial Data Center, estimated that US and UK universities would need to train thousands of cybersecurity experts over the next few years to address growing cyber threats.
“Cyber-physical security is now considered the number one threat to national security, being deemed more critical than conventional nuclear attacks. Last year alone, the US logged over 300,000 virus attacks on their networks and noted that organized crime now makes more money from cyber crime than any other activity”, Williams said.
The two-day summit, which was organized by the University of Wales Global Academy and the MIT's Geospatial Data Center, discussed specific aspects of the cybersecurity threat, including environmental security, supply chain management, and high performance computing.