The Cybersecurity Industry Continues to Struggle with Skill Shortages

R. Muru

Summary Bullets:

• Industry estimates indicate there are around 3 million cybersecurity professionals worldwide and over 60% more are required to address the global needs of businesses and governments.
• There are no easy short-term fixes in solving the recruitment problem in the cybersecurity sector. A concentrated effort across a number of entities, including government, industry, and education, will be required.

Exponential Rise in Cyber-Attacks as the Globe Reaches 2020 Year-End

Exponential increases in cybersecurity attacks are nothing new. In fact, if you cast your eyes back to 2017-2019, attacks like malware in mobile increased by over 50%, over 40% of commercially available IoT devices had some form of security breach, and applications like cryptocurrency coin mining quadrupled in cyber-attacks. Cybersecurity spending in countries like the U.S. also increased over $14 billion in 2019. With this in mind, as we approach 2020 year-end, the worry of going into some form of lockdown as a result of increased spikes in COVID-19 puts further fuel on increased cyber-attacks. Just in the past two months, we have seen attacks on organizations like NATO (i.e., phishing) and the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the U.N.’s shipping agency (i.e., a sophisticated cyber-attack that disabled its website and intranet).