Bridging the Looming Global IT Security Professional Shortage

I must admit that I recorded the accompanying video blog post before I had a chance to read the 2014 Cisco Annual Security Report (CASR), but this time slip on my part sets up a now-more-than-ever situation for what I’m about to tell you. The CASR projects 500,000 to 1,000,000 person global shortage in the number of IT security professionals that public and private sector organizations will need to cope with the security challenges of the foreseeable future. Yikes!

How will societies around the world bridge this gap? Technical schools and universities can train new people, but that’s going to take time for them to respond to demand, much less do the actual training. Public and private organizations can also recruit existing security professionals, but this can quickly turn into a bidding war for talent. I can also project increased demand for outsourced security services, but many of the supply and demand dynamics will apply here as with recruiting from the pool of established experts.One of the best ways to address the security professional skills gap is to upgrade the skills of people who already work with you (and also know your IT infrastructure and business inside and out) to add security expertise to their repertoire. It’s clearly the quickest, most cost effective, and least disruptive path to upgrading institutional security skill sets. It’s also no secret that IT professionals who confidently deliver value today worry about becoming obsolete tomorrow. I’m sure that almost every IT professional who seeks career growth and increased relevancy will jump at the opportunity to stay ahead of the security skills demand curve.

That said, I invite you to view my video blog post and go further to explore Learning@Cisco’s portfolio of IT and network security training and certification offerings, including some major revisions to our industry leading CCNP Security, and the introduction of a new Cybersecurity Specialist certification.

Watch the video below:

Read more about the news here:   http://newsroom.cisco.com/release/1312231

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