Design and development of a web application for skills’ Gap analysis

Abstract

Digitalization is completely transforming the world and society, as well as how we work. The need to gain and develop digital skills has significantly increased in order to keep up with this new social and labor reality. Cybersecurity risks, as one of the many challenges of digitalization, need therefore to be addressed and tackled. For this very reason, the necessity to gain and develop digital skills is of paramount importance. But to reduce these security risks, it is essential to first identify digital skills levels amongst the population. The purpose of this thesis, as well as the project’s ultimate objective, was to design and implement a tool capable of identifying and measuring these digital skills in order to assess and address cybersecurity weaknesses. This tool, a web application, was ordered and developed for Laurea University of Applied Sciences, which is a Finnish higher-education organization that operates in the south of Finland.

The research and development process of this project prompted, through the use of qualitative approaches and combined with the adoption of an agile development method, a comprehensive solution. A number of technologies such as client & server side tools, web programming languages, and cloud hosting resources were employed to accomplish this goal. The project was successfully implemented, and all its objectives were achieved.