Sudhakar Ramakrishna, CEO of Pulse Secure, a global provider of enterprise secure access solutions, discusses the impact of the cyberskills shortage in the US and what needs to be done to address this.
More than 200,000 cybersecurity positions remain unfilled in the US, an astonishing number that will increase as fast as organisations’ attack surfaces and cyberthreats expand driven by the proliferation of IoT, BYOD and cloud apps.
Addressing this shortfall is essential and while changes are happening, educational institutions, communities and technology companies need to pick up the pace and work together.
New York University and the New York City Cyber Command (NYC3)’s cybersecurity master’s degree programme is an example of the type of initiative we need worldwide. Developed with leading New York employers such as Booz Allen Hamilton, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and others, the programme aims to address the local acute InfoSec talent shortage while answering a request from New York Mayor Bill de Blasio to add 10,000 cybersecurity experts to the workforce.
This type of action needs to be multiplied around the globe. The cyberskills shortage in the workforce can only be resolved with committed individuals within the educational and cybersecurity community who can leverage technology to share how to use the right tools and applications to protect the access to and secure use of an organisation’s information and systems.
At the same time, cybersecurity awareness and training need to become more progressive and extend beyond the company to reach high schools, to help prepare future specialists in the field. Just as robotics has taken storm in middle schools and universities, so must security games, such as the hackathon run by New York University Tandon School of Engineering and hosted by Grenoble INP ESISAR, become institutionalised.
Technology providers like us already play an essential role, by providing hands-on training to help professionals learn how to become skilled at everything from protecting access to critical infrastructures to detecting threats and responding to issues that arise.
The only way to fix this gap in the cyberskills workforce is to provide those interested in entering the field with the necessary tools and knowledge to ward off everyday threats that exist within an organisation. The sooner we expand our collective efforts, both technology providers and educators, to bring cybersecurity into a wider range of curriculum at young ages, add relevant university programs and expand professional training opportunities, the sooner we can help turn the tide and reduce the shortfall of well-trained, cyberskilled specialists.
