Skills required for a cyber security career have changed
As we saw earlier this week, the cyber security industry is looking for new blood in order to solve the skills crisis.
Another study this week by security and compliance firm Tripwire underlines this, with 81 percent of existing security professionals believing that the skills required for the job have changed in the past few years.
This shows in the fact that 20 percent of respondents say that their organizations have hired people with expertise not specific to security over the past two years, and another 17 percent say they plan to do the same in the next two years. In addition 50 percent plan to invest more heavily in training their existing staff to help with the looming skills shortage.
According to Tripwire's study, 93 percent of security professionals are concerned about the cyber security skills gap, and 72 percent believe it's more difficult to hire skilled security staff to defend against today’s complex cyber attacks compared to two years ago.
"It's evident that security teams are evolving and maturing with the rest of the cyber security industry, but the pool of skilled staff and training simply aren’t keeping up," says Tim Erlin, vice president of product management and strategy at Tripwire. "For example, beyond their technical duties, security practitioners may now be expected to spend more time in boardrooms or in the CFO’s office to secure more budget. While the makeup of the cyber security workforce may be changing, the fundamentals of protecting an organization have not. It will be critical during this transition to ensure there’s a long-term strategy in place around maintaining their foundational security controls."
The study looks at other ways of solving the skills gap too. 91 percent plan to supplement their team by outsourcing for skills, and 88 percent believe managed services would add value to solving the skills gap problem. 98 percent expect other functions like non-security teams to be more involved in cyber security in future, and 96 percent believe that automation will play a role in solving the skills gap.
You can find out more about the results on the Tripwire blog.
Photo Credit: Den Rise/Shutterstock