OCBC Bank and Temasek Polytechnic are launching a cyber certification pathway to train up to 200 of the bank's employees to become cyber risk analysts and cybersecurity specialists in the next three years.

The pathway, which was launched at the bank’s learning and development arm OCBC Campus, is part of OCBC’s Future Smart program, a S$20 million initiative to reskill and upskill its employees that was announced in May 2018.

The pathway will focus on four main domains – digital services and solutions, software development, risk and assurance, and security operations and monitoring. Through the partnership, lecturers from Temasek Poly's School of Informatics & IT collaborated with OCBC on subject matters such as risk management, audit as well as cybersecurity.

Vincent Choo, OCBC’s Head of Group Risk Management, shared in media "At OCBC, we strongly believe that people will be the most important line of defense against potential threats. The bank takes great efforts to ensure that our people are aware of and trained to deal with existing and emerging risks."

OCBC said at the time that it aims to train 200 more data scientists and analysts over the next three years through the pathway to double the number of data scientists and analysts it has now.

Meanwhile, Temasek Poly has also partnered government agencies and software providers to develop and roll out curriculum and training in reverse malware engineering, digital security and digital forensics.