In light of the news that the global cybersecurity skills gap has narrowed to three million and 63% of businesses lack the cybersecurity skills to keep threats at bay, please see below comment from David Emm, Principal Security Researcher at Kasperksy Lab.
David Emm, Principal Security Researcher at Kasperksy Lab.:
“We live in a connected world, where IT skills are becoming increasingly important, but we don’t have people in the roles needed to efficiently execute this; in some cases, businesses don’t know just how important these job roles are. Small and medium-sized businesses do not have the money to spend on in-house expertise, and often don’t have the resources to specialise. This has resulted is an ongoing gap and an inability to fend off attacks.
“There are two key factors affecting the skills gap. The first is lack of interest in the sector from the future generation. Our education system and the industry itself are not inspiring young people’s interests and talent in the field of cybersecurity, we need to be encouraging people into the industry. It’s increasingly important to equip children with cybersecurity skills at an early age to give them an idea of what cyber roles entail, and foster these skills. Kaspersky Lab research has revealed that demand is outpacing supply, with only half (50 per cent) of under-25s saying they’d join the fight against cybercrime – whilst a significant number would use their skills for fun (17 per cent), secretive activities (16 per cent), and financial gain (11 per cent) instead. We need to be addressing this problem, and making a career path in cybersecurity attractive to the future generations.
“With personnel and spending aside, we need to become smarter in dealing with security. It’s useless throwing money at an issue if the money isn’t spent in an effective way. Companies need to avoid carrying out risk assessments just to tick boxes; they need to be analysing these assessments, and learning from the results.”
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