Why Cyber Training Is So Important For Business
Experts agree that a workforce trained in cybersecurity is the strongest weapon in any business’s arsenal when it comes to network resilience and data protection.
While businesses spend a lot of time and effort putting up technical defenses to protect their systems, often the weakest spot is the users. Employees can do harm to the business by visiting infected websites, responding to phishing emails, using business email through public Wi-Fi and more.
Current training should look at the things that can go wrong, including using found USB sticks, poor password habits, and falling for phishing attacks. It also looks at the effects and costs of the downtime these things can cause.
Your business cannot simply “buy in” security technology in the same way that a consumer purchases an antivirus package for a PC.
Cyber crime is not just about software; with more and more cyber-criminals targeting workers, through phishing emails and other ploys, making sure you have a security-savvy team in place is more important than ever.
“Worldwide spending on cyber-defence products and services is forecast to exceed $1trn until 2021,” says Oyku Isik, professor of information systems management at Vlerick Business School in Belgium.
“Yet every year we hear [of] a cyber-incident that is significantly worse than one in the previous year. This is a clear sign that all the investment in technology is necessary, but not enough. It is now time to invest in people.”
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Making sure you have trained experts in cyber-security is still important too, and now, more than ever, these experts also need to be strong communicators. But recruiting talent for cyber-security roles is increasingly difficult, with Britain facing a digital skills gap that could leave up to three million jobs unfilled by 2030.
In cybersecurity, the problem is particularly intense, with a report from the UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy suggesting that even government departments struggle to recruit talent. Research by KPMG this year found that more than half of chief information security officers (52pc) said they struggled to recruit talent.
Prioritising Skills
To address the skills gap, businesses need to rethink how they recruit and train cyber-security professionals, says Ruth Davis, head of commercial strategy and public policy for BT Security speaking to reportes.
“The idea that people need to be qualified in a STEM science, technology, engineering and mathematics subject, have five years of experience and security qualifications is outdated ... one of BT’s best graduate cryptographers studied music.”
Instead, businesses should look for people with roughly similar skill sets and the right aptitude and then rain them up,
“The focus to date has been on building a future pipeline of talent via schools and universities. This was the right priority at the time, but we now need to broaden our focus to help those with transferable skills or aptitude move into the industry ... we need to focus on mid-career transfer, getting people with similar skill sets and the right aptitude to come and work in our sector; because we need people now.”
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The Global Cyber Skills & Training Shortage:
