On 3rd and 4th December 2025, researchers Dr Afshin Ashofteh and Dr Yasser Al Helaly represented MagIC, the research centre of NOVA IMS, at the official kick-off of the SafeWeb – Cybersecurity and VET project in Västerås, Sweden. Hosted by Mälardalens Universitet, this two-day meeting brought together partners from across Europe to launch a forward-looking initiative dedicated to strengthening cybersecurity education within Vocational Education and Training (VET) systems.

Funded by the Erasmus+ programme, SafeWeb aims to equip educators with the tools and methodologies to teach digital safety in an evolving threat landscape. The project will deliver a multilingual e-learning platform, a cybersecurity game, a modular online course with a teaching guide, and a simulation environment that allows educators and students to engage with real-world digital threats through interactive role-play.

MagIC's contribution to the project centres on curriculum development and learning strategy design. The team will lead the creation of one of the cybersecurity course modules, peer review educational content, and contribute to the design of applied learning environments that simulate attacker/defender scenarios. In addition, NOVA IMS will organise a national multiplier event to disseminate the project’s outcomes in Portugal and support broader European engagement through the SafeWeb online competition.

The Västerås meeting focused on foundational topics such as project management, work package coordination, dissemination planning, and quality assurance. It laid the groundwork for the collaborative, iterative development process that will define SafeWeb over its 30-month duration.

MagIC brings to SafeWeb a validated pedagogical model, “Think Like a Hacker to Protect Like a Cyber Engineer,” which was awarded the NOVA Pedagogical Innovation Award in 2025. This approach combines ethical hacking exercises with structured defence design, drawing on real-incident scenarios and widely adopted security frameworks such as the Cyber Kill Chain and NIST/ENISA standards. With over 300 students annually engaged through practice-based assessments, the model has proven effective in boosting cybersecurity talent and building operational defence skills.

Through this partnership, MagIC reinforces its commitment to educational innovation and to the strategic application of data science in addressing complex societal challenges such as cybersecurity.