Tue, 11 Jun 2013Security and defence giant BAE Systems has made a clear signal of its priorities for the workforce of the future, by placing nearly half of its 2013 graduate intake into its cyber and security business Detica.

BAE Systems Detica will take on 130 engineering, IT, maths and physics graduates, or 44% of BAE’s total 2013 intake of 293, as part of 600 staff due to join Detica’s current workforce of 2,600 globally.

Martin Sutherland, Detica’s managing director, says: “Our growth reflects a huge demand for technologies which defend against cyber attack, combat fraud and help businesses effectively manage the sometimes overwhelming amounts of data available to them.” The National Audit Office estimates the cost of cyber crime in the UK to be between £18bn and £27bn annually.

The next largest tranche, of 49 students, will go to the company’s military aircraft business. Ship building and services will bring in 38 graduates, and 33 head to work on submarines.

All BAE Systems graduates join a two-year development programme in which they undertake four separate six-month placements.

• This comes the week after sector body the Institution of Engineering and Technology announced last week the creation of a new sponsorship scheme for Masters-level degrees across four universities in response to a report from the Institution which it noted “showed that a significant lack of skilled workers was hampering the UK's fight against cyber-crime”.