The 21st Century is an era of digital revolution in which businesses of all sorts have become highly reliant on technology, opening new doors for growth opportunities. But with this ease of doing business comes one major issue: cyber threats! These come in many forms including malware, ransomware attacks, phishing scams, and much more. The growth rate of these threats to business functionality raises the need for robust cybersecurity to fortify defences.
The rapid growth of the digital space outpaces any firm’s capacity to cover all grounds of safety from cyberattacks, creating a greater need for cybersecurity specialists who can oversee the holistic security requirements. But this need for skilled personnel comes with a large experience gap. In fact a recent report by Thomson Reuters proved that about 92% of the respondents witnessed skill gaps within their organizations, especially in cloud security and 54% of them said that the situation has deteriorated over time.
This shows that despite organisations’ rising awareness about cyber security, there remains a barrier to finding trained professionals to create and maintain important IT infrastructure leading to a massive skill gap that hackers might exploit.
Now that we have addressed that there is a skill gap, what are the reasons for this void within the technology space?
- Constant Evolution of the Threat Landscape: Cyberattacks have been increasing at an alarming pace and it has been hard to keep track of them. As we innovate for a better tomorrow, cybercriminals innovate to steal the betterment for their own benefit. These creative threat implementors have forced an increase in demand for a workforce with the latest knowledge and skills to tackle them.
- Shortage of Qualified Graduates: Universities have always focused more on the theory end rather than implementing strategies practically. Though a cybersecurity graduate might have the knowledge on how to tackle a threat, when put in a live situation, due to lack of practice and expertise, they can potentially panic and slip up. While on the surface, these minor errors can be considered trivial, but even the smallest of issues can potentially lead a massive data breach.
- The widespread shift to Remote Work: While the lockdown era led to a significant shift to remote job opportunities, it increased cybersecurity with employees connecting to different internet networks which may or may not secure, increasing the load on existing cybersecurity professionals to manage each endpoint.
So, how do we address this cybersecurity skill gap?
- Redesigning the program curriculum: Institutions and industry leaders are working on designing programs that focus on providing the graduates with practical knowledge of cybersecurity, as well as keeping them in touch with the trending technologies that can be used as a defence.
- Training and Development: Employers have now started inculcating training modules for IT professionals in cybersecurity and infrastructure management, so as to increase the potential of gaining higher IJPs. This is a more cost-effective method while also providing new growth avenues to internal employees, hence retaining talent.
- Information Security Policy Set-up for Greater Awareness: Creating a introduction training module of Infosec for all new joining employees, as well as a yearly refresher can help lessen the burden on cybersecurity professionals while raising individual awareness on how cyber threats can be mitigated at the grassroot level.
Conclusion
We as humans have started digitally transforming the world for good, whether it’s business or personal interaction, there has been no stone unturned. But with digitization, the crimes that were happening physically like theft, assault, etc, have now moved online too. Our biggest currency is ‘data’ and everyone is out there to get a piece of this cookie.
So, to not only secure one’s own business data, but also millions of strings containing private information of individuals, needs to be secured by professionals in the private and public sector.
Cybersecurity might get better with AI, but skilled professionals are needed to wield this tool right. If you are looking for a career change, planning to start your job within the tech space or are a business trying to secure database, it is time to consider upskilling into the Cybersecurity domain.