AI, data management, and cybersecurity: the skills that will make a difference

December 15, 2025

Artificial intelligence is no longer a distant promise: it is already shaping the way we work, learn, and make decisions. It speeds up our reasoning, structures complex ideas, improves quality processes, and changes expectations for knowledge-intensive professions—and, gradually, many other sectors where technology is redefining professional practices. Solutions are evolving at a rapid pace, and a professional's ability to remain relevant will increasingly depend on their mastery of these tools. The challenge will be to know how to use AI without outsourcing our thinking to it, at the risk of becoming dependent on it and weakening the skills that set us apart: our consciousness, our emotions, and our free will.

The leverage of sovereignty

In this context, Switzerland must continue to consolidate its technological sovereignty. We need solutions that meet our high standards for confidentiality, resilience, and data protection, without falling into over-regulation that would stifle innovation. The world will not wait: to remain competitive, we must balance risk management with the ability to move forward at the global pace. For 15 years, Switzerland has ranked first in the world in innovation. This result is based in particular on a highly efficient education system: two world-class polytechnic schools, leading universities, and one of the most effective vocational training systems in the world. These assets provide an exceptional breeding ground for developing sovereign AI solutions and supporting controlled innovation.

The skills needed to master the tool

But AI is just one of three trends that are redefining professional skills. The second concerns data, which has become the raw material for all decision-making. However, it must be accurate, organized, and regularly updated. It can be thought of as a huge library containing billions of items—books, articles, videos, audio recordings. If the classification system is flawed, nothing can be found. If the sources are unreliable, the analysis is based on shaky foundations. And without an archiving policy, obsolete information ends up obscuring the essentials and providing misleading guidance.

Without a minimum level of data literacy, professionals lose their analytical autonomy and risk relying on decisions they cannot understand or control. In professions where precision and responsibility are key, this dependence becomes a risk. Sociologically, data is also at the heart of power relations: as research on zones of uncertainty has shown, it can be shared to strengthen collective intelligence, kept as a strategic asset, or manipulated to influence a decision. Reading data, understanding its limitations, and identifying its biases is therefore as much a technical skill as it is a governance issue.

Securing your work environment

Added to these challenges is a third pillar: cybersecurity. Cyber risk no longer affects only large institutions: small organizations are now exposed to the same threats, often without the optimal resources to develop a robust strategy. Technical aspects are not enough; governance, individual behavior, access management, and compliance with legal requirements are just as crucial. Cybersecurity has become a professional skill in its own right.

Faced with these transformations—AI, data, cybersecurity—the role of a professional association such as ours—for the banking and finance sector—is clear: to support the development of skills among economic players by offering practical training courses rooted in the reality of the profession, and to enable each professional to remain in control of their own employability.

Starting in January, two structural programs embody this mission:

• The ISFB Data Management certificate, which provides the fundamentals for developing a data culture, communicating with experts, and correctly interpreting indicators.
• The cybersecurity awareness module, designed for small organizations, which assesses the maturity of the organization, identifies priority risks, and builds a realistic initial roadmap.

The goal is not to turn employees into IT specialists, but to give them back control—control over their data, their tools, and the decisions they make. The competitiveness of organizations will now depend on their ability to leverage three inseparable drivers: AI, data, and cybersecurity.

Technology accelerates, but it does not replace reflection, responsibility, or human relationships. AI amplifies, data enlightens, cybersecurity protects—but competence remains deeply human. It is this competence that we must collectively strengthen in order to prepare the professionals who will build the economy of tomorrow, an economy that is competitive, sovereign...and sustainably anchored in human intelligence.

Article published in Smart Media's TdG "Focus & Digitalization" insert on December 15, 2025.

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