Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 35 seconds

Survey Sheds New Light on Cybersecurity Skills Gap

Amid widespread concerns about a shortfall of trained cybersecurity professionals, new survey results may help illuminate the extent of the problem.

skills 3260624 640 1Cybersecurity career development platform Cybrary polled more than 800 IT and security pros across a range of experience levels. According to the survey, a striking 72% of respondents agree that skill gaps exist on their own teams.

What’s more, 65% of managers in the survey indicated that the skills gap has a negative impact on their team’s effectiveness. According to the results, 46% of organizations don’t confirm new hire skills for specific roles, while 40% rarely or never assess the skills of newly onboarded team members.

“Despite industry-wide recognition around this growing skills gap, there has been little movement in bridging this gap,” said Ryan Corey, CEO of Cybrary, in a press release.

The cybersecurity skills gap is getting worse as 2020 enters its home stretch, according to Emil Sayegh, CEO of cloud services provider Ntirety. Writing at Forbes.com, Sayegh says that as telecommuting continues heading into the year-end, cyberthreats keep mounting. Sayegh suggests that organizations cultivate internal talent by offering training both to current team members and to the staff more widely. He also recommends recruiting beyond traditional sources of talent and investing in outside managed security services to fill in any remaining lacks of expertise.

Meanwhile, as ZDNet reports, a startup called RangeForce is also working to reverse the cybersecurity talent drought.

The founders—Jaanus Kink, Margus Ernits, and Taavi Must—helped NATO establish its Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence in Estonia a decade ago, following cyberattacks in the former Soviet republic. Now, they offer cybersecurity training for organizations big and small.

Washington, D.C.-based RangeForce has 75 employees globally, including 25 in Estonia. The company also recently secured $16 million in series A funding. According to RangeForce’s Must, slightly more than half of companies can’t find cybersecurity pros with the necessary skills.

Read 1890 times
Rate this item
(0 votes)

Visit other PMG Sites:

PMG360 is committed to protecting the privacy of the personal data we collect from our subscribers/agents/customers/exhibitors and sponsors. On May 25th, the European's GDPR policy will be enforced. Nothing is changing about your current settings or how your information is processed, however, we have made a few changes. We have updated our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy to make it easier for you to understand what information we collect, how and why we collect it.