Security firm Cybertrust today launched a graduate recruitment program for university leavers which involves assigning them a senior security engineer as mentor for the length of the course.

The 15 month long graduate recruitment program is expected to start March 2007 and concentrate solely on getting graduates into security administration or security engineering roles.

Graduates are trained on the F5, PIX (Cisco) and SideWinder (Secure Computing) firewalls, ITIL and will become certified CISSP and CCNA upon completion of the program. Studies will be based in Cybertrust's operational and professional services group located in Canberra.

The students will be rotated every three months into the five separate learning areas. Cybertrust will use lecturers from the University of Canberra and the Australian National University to find the most suitable candidates from undergraduate and post graduate degrees in Information Technology and Computer Science.

Dyanne Lerardo, Cybertrust human resources director, said candidates who have graduated from university with an IT-related degree in the last two years are also welcome to apply.

"The graduate peer panel will be looking for candidates who are proactive, professional, career focused and willing to learn fast and hit the ground running," Lerardo said. "IDC predict the Australian security services market will be worth $587 million by 2010, yet there is a problem with the skills shortage and lack of experience in the market.

"Our program aims to fill this gap and develop a pool of candidates that intimately understands the Cybertrust environment both professionally and technically and can contribute to meeting the security and business needs of our international customer base."

Initially twenty potential applicants will undergo three rounds of interviews and will need to submit CV and university results to Cybertrust for selection.