I’m working on a research paper that discusses ways to address the shortfall of professionals across all cyber-related fields. As of February 2023, there are over 750,000 job openings in the U.S alone.* This problem is much bigger than just the talent gap for cybersecurity positions and it is getting worse. The need for people who have basic cyber knowledge and a skill set in another field is not likely to yield in the foreseeable future. There are many reasons for this and no simple solution.
One of the primary causes of this deficiency is the lack of cybersecurity career awareness. Students in middle and high schools are rarely presented with career options that relate to cybersecurity. Students tend to aim for careers they can see themselves in. They do this by relating to someone they know who has a job in that field. If they never meet or see anyone in a cybersecurity position, careers in the field are never on their list of those to consider. This also applies to adults who are reentering the workforce or career shifting. They may be perfectly suited to a position based on their previous experience, but because the job title has “cyber” in it, they do not apply. Their belief that any job title or description including the term “cyber” must be technical prevents them from considering these positions.
There are very few primary or secondary schools that offer cybersecurity classes. Even fewer schools have cyber content in non-technical classes. This means our high school graduates are entering the workforce without any formal education in cyber security. We are expecting our young adults to be able to navigate the cyber world on their own. That is a disservice to them and to the greater community. We cannot expect them to perform well in cyber related careers when we have not prepared them at all.
Keep in mind that it only takes one person clicking on a phishing link to infect the entire organization within a few hours. Cybersecurity awareness posters have slogans like “Cybersecurity is everybody’s business”. They are meant to drive home the point that everyone plays a role in protecting their organization. We need to do a better job highlighting the tasks everyone does in that effort. From there it will be easy for us to point out how different jobs interact with cybersecurity tasks. This would help demystify cybersecurity roles and from there careers in the field. My hope is that this would increase the interest in cybersecurity related job postings.
We have all the talent we need to face the challenges of the cyber world. We just need to focus our efforts on growing that talent by starting with children while they are little and expanding on what they learn every year until graduation.
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