A partnership for training: IQNet and the business schools of the "Politecnico" of Milano - Italy IQNet has always supported the development of human resources as one of the critical factors for improvement and innovation in organisational management. In the last 3 years a group of IQNet partners have joined an EU funded project whose main goal has been that of developing SME’s innovation through training of personnel. The “DIGI-Q” training course has been issued by IQNet partners in cooperation with local Universities in the Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Slovenia. The students that graduated from the course have been granted the IQNet attestation for Process Innovation Manager (PIM). [see IQNet newsletter #6] The involvement of Universities and certification bodies has given to the project a relevant value that has also been recognised by the final assessment on the results done by the EU Commission. MIP, the management business school of the “Politecnico” (technical university) of Milan - Italy issued the third edition of the DIGI-Q course that started on 2005-12-17 in close cooperation with CISQ. Another group of IQNet partners (CQS, MSZT, CISQ, SRAC and SlQ) are participating in a new EU funded project named “PIM” that has the aim of providing the European eastern countries with an internet based knowledge database on innovation. The IQNet partners of the project shall be the pilots providing contact and training to certified small and medium enterprises. This project is the natural follow-up of DIGI-Q and strengthens the role of certification bodies as partners for the development of SMEs worldwide. At the moment the situation is evolving with another occasion for cooperation between IQNet and the Universities. “CEFRIEL” and “MIP”, respectively the ICT and the management business schools of the Politecnico of Milan have designed and issued a course on data security named “Information Security Manager” (ISM). In awareness of the fact that certification to ISO 27001 (the former BS 7799-2) is one of the most promising activities of the next future due to the continuing development of Information technology based systems and frequent breaches of the security logical and physical boundaries. IQNet has thus agreed to recognise and support the validity of specialised training on security. By agreement with the two schools of the Politecnico the first IQNet attestations were issued for 140 persons who successfully attended the course in the last three years. On 2005-11-11, Fabio Roversi, President of IQNet, delivered the attestations in Milan. ISM is a 200 hours course specifically designed for employed persons. It includes 200 hours of lessons and exercises issued during every other week end, on Friday (full day) and Saturday morning. The course includes a special activity called “project works” consisting of the development of a project designed and realised by a small group of students under the guidance of a tutor form the faculty of Politecnico. The project is a real case proposed by companies involved in the training of their personnel and allows for the development of significant parts of the information security system within the organisations. And this is just the beginning! The agreement between IQNet and Politecnico will be soon extended in order to allow other IQNet partners to set-up a cooperation with local Universities for the issue of the ISM course. It shall be based on the same format and syllabus as those used in Italy and recognised by IQNet. By mid 2006 other IQNet partners will be able to provide, through local Universities, training to enterprises and organisations in order to qualify their managers and improve their security systems. Dario Agalbato, IGQ/CISQ aga@igq.it