Topic: Cybersecurity workers shortage in USA (Read 315 times)

With this, it has been answered in Australia when we want a job that must be prepared is expertise because I think this is very good because education only teaches theory, apart from that I think skills and competencies must still be done independently. and I think this is quite good considering for now especially in my country to get a degree in education can be bought with money without the need for us to study and the results even with an MBA even though the skills and competencies are even zero and nothing at all. but with different skills. because there are some people who have high skills in doing something in the IT field they are not too concerned with degrees but this is what attracts them

The other issue is that a lot of the smaller businesses that want cybersecurity pay poorly. So there is a lot of movement between jobs. Some people who can't find a better job in the field leave, and as the need grows it becomes harder to find them. I have seen too many places that want a good but not great cybersecurity person but are only willing to pay $65,000 in a major city. Sorry, not going to happen.

So the jobs go unfilled. Then someone else sees that Business "X" is looking for someone and only paying $65,000 so they advertise their position at the same rate...and wonder why they can't find someone.

Not you can't afford to live on wages, but far enough below where they should be that it's not worth it for a lot of people to even bother looking at the position.

-Dave

I have worked in many tech companies and I can tell you that knowing how to code is actually a minus in many of them, now I know it sounds very very weird, why would they want to hire a bad coder over a good coder if they are a tech company right? Well, it is simply because if you are a great coder, then you will leave soon, because it all depends on one of your projects that you develop in your free time to get accepted, and as soon as it is accepted then you will leave and make money from that.

Everyone is making mobile apps, websites, projects and what not. However, if you are a smart person who can barely code, they can teach you that and let you learn only the amount you need to and that’s about it, there is nothing else they will teach you, only the part you need to know for that position, which will keep you there longer. So, it is not a shock to hire non-coders to a coding position if they know just a tiny bit.

In the digital age, cyber attack is common. This could even be where war should just happen instead of sending nukes. Cybersecurity is as much important as protecting lives. US had been attacked many times the most recent was the oil pipeline.

It could be avoided if they encourage geeks to be geeks not getting bullied in school instead. An ECE engineering can still be honed to become penetration expert if given the motivation.

Teens today are more inclined to become tiktoker influencer than having a real career.  Parents today doesnt have high expectation for thier kids anymore.

True, as long as you have a background in Information Technology, like a programmer or data base admin, the company can retool you and give you the proper training in order to be a cyber security analyst/expert.

Speaking of Australia, they are one country that really take cyber security very seriously, regardless of private companies being attack or government agencies, they are very quick to response to any situation.

It's not they don't understand, it's because they don't like spending on IT too much, companies are notorious for cutting costs when it comes to stuff like their security especially if they are exploiting the people that they're hiring. But so far, these mentality of cutting costs for IT is waning because people have seen how devastating a compromise is in their IT infrastructure.

I love Australia so much but I can't live with spiders
My friend is a cybersecurity specialist in Australia and she has told me that in IT sectors, sometimes they don't care much about your educational background and what matters the most is your working experience and I would say that it's true at some point. I have often seen people finishing MBA working as a fullstack developers, I have even seen one as a DevOps engineer in one bank after finishing an intense Bootcamp and learning course.

Just saw in one LinkedIn job offer section that the requirements for cybersecurity analyst was - A qualification or equivalent work experience in Information Technology.

This is a good suggestion to leave this kind of challenges. Shortage of cyber security workers and experts because cyber crime is on the rise. There are many things that any government (not only the US country) can do to solve the problem just the way you have suggested. Encouraging young people in such career is one way to it and encouragement is not only by speaking it or announcing it public but to also create incentives to make it more attractive and lucrative. They can make the career easier to access, the study and scholarship too to be stressless and creating pension benefit for those that will work to retirement. They are many other incentives to be created to encourage people into it.

In the face of many challenges technology has helped most in the normal life. It is also said that technology will affect people's personal and professional lives in a new way in the future as the use of technology grows and grows so does cyber security the trend of grabbing money to get various traps online has increased all over the world. Even in developed countries like the united states and the united kingdom such frauds are happening all the time That's why the united states and other countries around the world have stepped up their cyber security.

Michael Crichton, the author of Jurassic Park, is famous for publicizing the statistic of the united states having 25% of all the lawyers in the entire world. Most americans want to be a lawyer making $100,000+ year. There isn't the interest in science and engineering fields, that countries like japan enjoy.

IT security, at a high level, is notorious for being a difficult sector to work in. Vulnerabilities and exploits arise and are patched. The landscape is constantly shifting and evolving. There are always new skills and knowledge to be absorbed to stay current and relevant. Its not like being a doctor or lawyer where many can stop learning once they get their degree.

Cybersecurity can also be very tedious and have a high burn out rate. Humans aren't well adapted to staring at screens for 12 to 30 hours a day. Poring over code and documentation. As is sometimes demanded by IT security fields.

I think that the need for cyber experts has seen a significant surge in the past couple of years, especially with the many attacks that have been happening in many companies, and on the other hand you have less people graduating or having a degree in it due to it not being not so popular before these couple of years and most of the ones that have work in another field because the cybersecurity is not a busy job, so i guess this demand will create more incentive for student to roll it or study it.

I think the USA and a lot of other countries are lacking skilled IT Security specialists that can compete with Russian and Chinese hackers. The threat is there, because with Solarwind, the US pointed to Russian hackers that infiltrated a security company and then government departments. (It was embedded in a Solarwind upgrade, after they reverse engineered the exploit)

The only way to neutralize these threats are to hire "White hat" hackers to train security experts in the counter measures to neutralize these hacks. 

At least in my country the acquisitions made for a hospital, for example, are made by politicians, economists and doctors. Take a wild guess, are they vulnerable?
I guess that this goes on in many companies, countries, fields. Although we're in a tech dependent world, many don't understand that fully; and some of those are the people who make the decisions, buy equipment, hire personnel.
The real world is not as smart as we'd like to believe.

In this fast paced and technology dependent world? Nobody asks for this specialists when their data security is tied to the prosperity of their company? I don't think that that's the case because if there's a lack in demand, there's should be reports regarding the negligence of the company when it comes to their cyber and data security.

I think the reason why cybersecurity workers shortage is happening are:

1. The degree and certification in cybersecurity are expensive.[
Maybe why there are only a limited of people in this industry is because the majority who are passionate to pursue this kind of career cannot afford it. Maybe the tuition fee for college is too much that they don't have enough money to pay for it. Hence, they would just look for another degree that is cheaper compared to what they like the most. If the college tuition is expensive, I think the certification would be of the same level as well. This will really drive away possible workers because they are discouraged by the financial barriers, to begin with.

2. Experience is usually needed before a company accepts and hires you.
If this will be the requirement to almost every company that is existing, I bet there would really be a shortage. Imagine finding a fresh graduate an existing job experience, it's absurd, right? I mean, if they would ask for seminars, training, and extracurricular, it would be fine, just not the job experience for like 5 years.

3. Maybe the cybersecurity workers already migrated to other countries.
This is self-explanatory. If the graduates will fly over different countries, the companies will really have no options to choose from. They will need to hire outsiders that are fit for the job. Otherwise, their company's security would be at big risk. They will be prone to hacking and ransonware attacks like what you have mentioned.

It seems like issues that has to do with cyber security got worst ever since this pandemic, cause I was steady seeing news about companies that were being attacked by hackers. I am not too sure about what you have said here about cyber security workers shortage. I believe there are many of them out there, it is up to the companies to look for them and pay them properly and also provide them with every necessary equipment that they will be needing for their job.

It is very important for every companies to put more effort in insuring that they have the best security on their platform. Any company that doesn’t invest more in security is making a big mistake, because if they end up getting attacked they are going to be losing a lot of money due to that.

There are hopefuls that are going into cybersec but it's just that some of employers aren't giving that much attention to their regularization and only going with freelancers. This is happening for some of the companies but there is no problem with those big companies that gives value to their security and that's why it's one of the highest paid job in the world even if you're just in the middle position.
Those that are still young and reading this topic and already in the IT field, you might want to get certified with cybersecurity certificates.

With advancements in technology the load of cyber security experts is also increasing and they have to learn new skills these days to combat any type of hack day DoS attack or phissing attack and they need to be concentrated on their work.The companies in US will try to hire only the experts in this field who have past experience and have specialised skills needed for that job along with certification as there is not any entry level competition for it and they require experience software engineer for this work.So you need to have college degrees first of all and work as intern for some months and then work with some big company and then you will be hired with these so clef companies with average salary of $80-$90k.So it's better to learn all those stuff and have problems solving mind to tackle with any kind of hack and work in better security protocols.I know a teen who setup his own company for cyber security and have huge client base at this time running million dollars business so it's upon you whether you want to be employee or hire them.

The question is not simple. On the one hand, systems and software systems are constantly becoming more complex, along with the growth of functionality. On the other hand, the more complex the system, the more points of failure it has, and in software it is highly likely a "hole" that can make the system work in an undocumented way. And there is a third party - people who are interested in implementing "backdoors" and have access to the development of corporate systems - these can be ordinary line developers, administrative personnel with the necessary powers.
At the same time, one must understand that it is much easier to create a destructive solution than to create and create complex complexes. Building a computer is difficult, making a hammer that can easily destroy a computer is very simple. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to "catch" such deliberate actions. And the logical continuation of this - it requires much more resources and time. Moreover, this process will always be a "catch-up game". Option - to introduce extremely harsh punishments for technological crimes, and special control over software developed for the public sector and critical segments of the economy.

I think this should be a big opportunity for IT specialist to venture into cybersecurity get certified and then get employed to help curb the situation on ground. It's in cases as this that people decide to switch occupation to fit into the present need of the society, provide solutions and add relevance to their own existence so the can boast of how the contributed in making an economy what it is