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The UAE Cybersecurity Council has partnered with IBM to launch a comprehensive national skills development initiative during GISEC Global 2026. Leveraging the free "IBM SkillsBuild" platform, the program aims to fortify the UAE’s digital talent pool by providing learners nationwide with access to over 1,000 specialized courses and industry-recognized certifications in high-demand fields such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data analytics, and cloud computing.

Target Audience and Practical Integration

The initiative is designed to bridge the gap between theoretical education and real-world technological challenges, targeting five distinct demographic categories:

School students

University students

Early-career professionals and individuals

Government employees

Participants in startup and innovation tracks

The Cybersecurity Council will deploy IBM SkillsBuild across its broader national ecosystem, prominently featuring integration with the CyberE71 platform. To ensure operational readiness, the curriculum will incorporate hands-on hackathons and practical scenarios derived from the evolving cyber threat landscape, directly linking academic training to active industry challenges.

Strategic Alignment and Executive Insights

The collaboration directly supports the "We the UAE 2031" vision, which targets positioning the nation among the top three globally in the Global Cybersecurity Index and the top ten in global talent attraction. The initiative acts as a force multiplier for existing national capacity-building platforms, such as the "Jahiz" portal for federal employees and the "Nafis" program for Emirati workforce integration.

UAE Cybersecurity Council: H.E. Dr. Mohammed Hamad Al Kuwaiti, Head of Cybersecurity for the UAE Government, stated that building robust national capabilities requires skills that translate directly into real-world work environments, cementing the talent base as a core pillar of the nation's cyber readiness.

IBM Leadership: Shukri Eid, General Manager for IBM Gulf, Levant, and Pakistan, emphasized the urgency of practical learning as technology fundamentally reshapes job requirements. He cited an IBM Institute for Business Value study indicating that 53% of CEOs expect their workforce will require reskilling between 2026 and 2028, with 83% acknowledging that successful AI adoption depends more on human capital than the technology itself.

The UAE partnership also advances IBM’s broader global commitment to upskill 30 million people by 2030, a target toward which the company has already reached over 22 million learners as of June 2026.