Automation as a Permanent Stopgap

The use of artificial intelligence and machine learning is already well-established within cybersecurity. Such systems are commonly used to extract, process, and disseminate large amounts of information quickly, often in the pursuit of developing more accurate intrusion detection heuristics. Automation is also used in active defense measures, mitigating credential stuffing attacks committed by bot computer systems (Sawers, 2020). Automated systems are so prevalent that by 2030, an estimated 30% of organizations will have implemented Security, Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) technologies. SOAR technology enables an organization to efficiently collate and analyze data from a variety…

Reconstructing the Education Pipeline

As the cybersecurity industry grows into young adulthood, serious consideration must be given when imagining the future. While new tools and techniques are developed to improve the quality of organizational cyber security, the advancement of technology will be meaningless without the existence of a workforce capable of deploying and maintaining such assets. The decentralized nature of the industry has delayed the creation of a common lexicon and taxonomy, sowing further confusion, and preventing many from attaining proper employment. Numerous organizations have responded to this disconnected state by constructing, and attempting to implement, various frameworks that unify…

Cyber Frameworks and the Delineation of Roles

Addressing the cyber jobs gap requires not only the training of relevant skills, but the organization of these skills into roles that enable an organization to attain operational completeness. Such delineation assists industry managers by dividing responsibilities into manageable categories that reduce ambiguity, provide clear boundaries, and support effective resource allocation[1]. Currently, the industry lacks a universal lexicon and taxonomy system, resulting in organizations requesting prospective candidates maintain an overly diverse and often disparate set of skills. …

Part Three of the Remediation Series

As previously established, an organizations cybersecurity doctrine is centered around disrupting the cyber-attack process, aka “killing the chain.” The ability for a potential victim to carry out this Kill Chain strategy depends largely on personnel and their collective KSA body. Entities that can build and maintain the proper assortment of KSA’s will succeed in their defense against cyber-attack, whereas those that lack such a collective will struggle to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of their digital assets. …

On Kill Chains, Threat Cycles, and the Cybersecurity Process

Part Two of the Remediation Series

For the purpose of framing the discussion on what hard and soft skills industry leaders request prospective applicants possess, let us first understand what the typical cybersecurity process entails. Establishing a standard model will afford each skill the benefit of contextual relevance, leading to the creation of a priority matrix that may clarify what Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSAs) current prospects and future students should devote their efforts to learning and mastering.

Defensive cyber infrastructure exists to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of digital…

A Concise Review of the Advised Skills, Policies, and Reforms Needed to Fill the Gap

In the preceding series of articles, we examined the social, economic, political, and educational factors that lead to the creation of the Cybersecurity jobs gap. The current state of the industry began in 2007 in response to the hacks in Estonia and the United States Department of Defense. Since that time, the world of Cybersecurity has undergone a large degree of evolution, with the aforementioned factors barely resembling their pre-9/11 selves. …

Education Factor

As the previous articles have established, the question concerning the cybersecurity jobs gap is more than just numbers. It is more than demand simply exceeding supply. In reality, the employment disparity is a skills disparity; a disconnect between what the industry needs and what is available. With the history of the cybersecurity industry reaching as far back as the 1970’s, one would assume the rapid increase in market demand that was spurred by the events of 2007 and the post-9/11 world would be met with a reserve of qualified individuals awaiting for the opportunity to take advantage of…

Economic Factor

When examining the economic factors that have contributed to the cybersecurity employment gap, it is helpful to view jobs as commodities. And, like any other commodities market, the jobs market is subject to the same universal law of supply and demand. This law provides a foundation from which additional compounding factors can be examined, such as the wage factor, barriers to entry, and returns on investment. Before we examine the specific, let us first touch upon the most generic: supply and demand. To put it simply, supply (the quantity of an item that will be sold at a…