To shrink cyber staffing gap, stop focusing on college

A driving force behind the cybersecurity skill shortage might be unrealistic expectations of the higher education system. 

According to a Center for Strategic and International Studies  / Intel report, only 7% of the top universities across a sampling of major nations had bachelor’s programs – majors it minors – in cybersecurity. Yet 70% of cybersecurity jobs in the United States require a bachelor’s degree as a minimum requirement. 

{mosads}That, suggests the report, is a key reasons more than 200,000 cybersecurity jobs went unfilled in 2015 – with estimates of unfilled jobs reaching the millions by 2019. 

“Simply put, most educational institutions do not prepare students for a career in cybersecurity,” said the report. 

At a CSIS event Wednesday to launch the report, Candace Worley, vice president of Intel Security noted “I work with a lot of people who don’t have a technical degree. Some who don’t have a degree at all.” Worley, too, does not have a technical degree. 

The report emphasizes that replacing degree requirements with third-party certifications, hacking competitions and other ways of proving coding mettle outside the academy might quickly bridge the skills gap. 

Says  the report, that might even include video gaming skills which emphasize problem-solving, rapid prioritization and even cybersecurity plotlines. 

Otherwise, said Worley, companies might “trade off” the least critical assignments to compensate for the lack of personnel. Breach investigations would still be done, but critical security maintenance might fall by the wayside. 

Filling government posts offers additional challenges, noted Phyllis Schneck, deputy under secretary for cybersecurity, Department of Homeland Security, who scoffs at private sector managers who worry she might poach their employees. 

“You can pay them four times what I can right now,” she said. “So, if I can steal them, I’m flattered.”

Beyond pay, she said, government has hurdles in security clearances and bureaucracy. Schneck said simple “customer service” tricks helped her keep from losing candidates as the wheels of procedure churned slowly. For one, she regularly calls hopefuls to tell them DHS is still interested. 

Streamlining the procedural hurdles to hire talent is one of her top priorities, though she recognizes that clearances are nothing to skimp on. Instead, she advocates authorizing recruiters to hire employees on the spot – as they will at an upcoming job fair – into temporary jobs to begin orientation while clearance runs simultaneously. 

The report notes that the U.S., United Kingdom, Israel and Australia have each started cybersecurity recruitment programs.