AC☁DC welcomed 8 students from the Naval Academy

First-year students from the Nikola Vaptsarov Naval Academy - Varna will undergo part of their training at the AbsCloud Data Center as part of a pilot dual education program in the field of cybersecurity. 

The program launched with the signing of a contract between the Naval Academy and members of the ICT Cluster Varna, including Abilix Soft—the company that manages the AC☁DC data center.

We believe this partnership offers students a completely different opportunity—to engage with real-world infrastructure from their very first year and experience firsthand what it’s like to work with real teams on practical cases and tasks. 

The Initiative

The program is a response to one of the systematic problems in Bulgarian technological education: the lack of synchronization between university and business. Students graduate with a theoretical foundation but lack exposure to real work environments. Often, this leads to a loss of motivation and student drop-outs. On the other hand, employers hire people with education in a specific field and train them from scratch. Both sides lose time and resources instead of working together from the start.

The companies from ICT Cluster Varna and the Naval Academy are offering a structured approach to this issue: a pilot program in which selected students enter a business environment at the very beginning of their education. Just like real employment, they undergo a selection process for a limited number of spots.

The Naval Academy is the logical partner for a cybersecurity program, as the school trains highly qualified professionals with a deep understanding of digital security as a priority—which is more than just a basic requirement in a data center. The university is the oldest technical educational institution in the Republic of Bulgaria, with a history and current activities that position it among the most authoritative centers for training specialists across various fields.

Why a Data Center is a Suitable Place for Cybersecurity Training

Cybersecurity as an academic discipline describes principles that look very different when put into daily practice. At AC☁DC, students will encounter:

• Physical security such as: Access control, video surveillance, visitation policies, and everything that comes before the network level. Physical access to a server bypasses any logical protection. Experiencing this live is different from reading about it in a textbook.
• Network segmentation in a production environment: What a real VLAN structure looks like, why client networks are isolated, what it means for a data center to be neutral from the perspective of traffic and trust among participants.
• Access and identity management: Who has access to what, how actions are logged, how privileges are managed in an environment with multiple clients and varying requirements.
• Monitoring and response: What real-time infrastructure monitoring looks like (alarms, thresholds, incident response procedures). 
• Compliance and audit: AC☁DC is certified under ISO/IEC 27001:2022 - the standard for information security management. Students will see how a standard is actually applied in practice. 

Read more on the topic: Students from the University of Economics – Varna visited AC☁DC

Program Launch

Last week, the AC☁DC team, together with representatives of the other ICT Cluster Varna companies participating in the pilot phase, had a working meeting with the Naval Academy to sign the partnership agreement.

Selecting the eight students was far from easy. Interest in practical training at the data center exceeded available spots—a clear sign that students are looking for genuine hands-on experience, not just additional academic hours. We are excited by the talents we meet—and the prospects for development afforded by such early practical experience.

The Potential of Varna as a Regional Technology Hub

This initiative is not an isolated event. It is part of a larger trend through which the city of Varna is building a technology ecosystem where education, business, and infrastructure are connected.

ICT Cluster Varna brings together companies with different profiles (software development, telecommunications, information security) around a common goal: the region retaining and developing technological talent. Dual education is a specific tool to achieve this.

For AC☁DC, participating in this program aligns with our position regarding the local IT ecosystem. The Tier 3 data center is not just infrastructure—it’s the physical foundation upon which services, companies, and careers are built in the region.

See also on the topic: What Makes a City Attractive for Technology Companies

What We Expect from the Internship

Dual education works when all three parties benefit: students gain real experience in a certified environment with a high level of security standards. The AC☁DC team will have the opportunity to work with young people with academic training, from whose perspective we can also learn a lot. The university comes closer to the needs of students and businesses and becomes even more attractive.

Follow the pages of ICT Cluster Varna and AC☁DC’s profiles for more information and updates about the program.

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