Gloucestershire College has recently opened two brand new training rooms at its Gloucester campus for IT and Cyber students and apprentices.

The rooms are fully equipped to current industry standards and can be used as isolation rooms for forensic and cyber activities as well as teaching.

The main cyber room has workstations with i7 processors, 32GB DDR4 RAM, 240GB SSD and 4TB HDDs along with Tableau Forensic Bridge write blockers. The network is independent from the regular College systems and allows complete flexibility in the choice of virtual machines, operating systems and application software.

The high-spec rooms are already in use as an impressive learning environment for those who are enrolled onto the College's higher level IT and Cyber training programmes including Software Developer, Cyber Security Technologist and Infrastructure Technician.

Andy Bates, CFO at the college is keen for businesses to consider how they can take advantage of the new facilities, "As a College we are fully committed to supporting the vision set out by Cheltenham Borough Council to make Cheltenham a national cyber hub. This includes supporting local businesses by training the next generation of IT and Cyber experts.

"Our new facilities which opened in Gloucester this summer are part of the significant investment we are making to help ensure this vision becomes a reality".

Local businesses including CEMAR, XQ Cyber and Cyber Security Associates who have apprentices at the College are already benefitting from the new facilities.

Dave Woodfine, director at Cyber Security Associates said: "Cyber Security Associates places a huge emphasis on retaining local talent within Gloucestershire, that's why we're delighted to be supporting Gloucestershire College and their cyber security apprenticeship programme.

"We're excited to be helping to develop the future cyber professionals that the industry so desperately needs."

The College is holding an open event for businesses to enjoy a free beer from Gloucester Brewery, have a look around and celebrate the launch of our new IT and Cyber facilities on Thursday 14 November from 4pm to 6pm.

If you would like to attend please email business.hub@gloscol.ac.uk.