CIO opinion
CIO OPINION
“
IT IS MORE
RELEVANT THAN EVER
FOR US TO LOOK TO
UNDER-REPRESENTED
DEMOGRAPHICS TO
HELP FILL THE GAP
OF CYBERSECURITY
SPECIALISTS TODAY.
//////////////////
Bridget Kenyon, Global CISO at Thales eSecurity
The cyberskills gap:
Why shying away from
the diversity debate is
no longer an option
The cyberskills shortage
is well reported and as
cyberattacks continue, it
is more important than
ever that businesses
take steps to futureproof
their workforce. Bridget
Kenyon, Global CISO at
Thales eSecurity, tells
us that it is time for
organisations to truly
embrace the diversity
debate to help bridge the
skills gap.
46
INTELLIGENTCIO
O
ver the last three years,
cyberattacks across the world
have risen by 63%. Attackers
have developed and optimised an
arsenal of highly effective approaches,
including phishing attacks, watering hole
attacks and USB seeding (just to name a
few) and as cybercriminals are becoming
more advanced, our cyberskills shortage
is worsening.
It is more relevant than ever for us to
look to under-represented demographics
to help fill the gap of cybersecurity
specialists today. The pool of ‘usual
suspects’ is pretty empty. The greater
the variety of people and the greater the
variety of experiences they bring with
them, the more resilient they can make
our organisational defences.
Understanding the cybersecurity
skills gap
The cybersecurity skills gap is a pertinent
issue, affecting businesses of all sizes.
In 2018, small businesses in the UK
were disproportionately impacted by
cyberattacks, resulting in losses worth £17
billion. New research has also outlined that
the UK alone could lose £1 billion this year
in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS)
attacks, a type of cyberattack that aims to
crash a website by flooding it with traffic.
Worryingly, a third of small businesses
have no cybersecurity strategy in place
according to YouGov and some security
practitioners even believe they should have
the right to ‘hack back’ when attacked by
cybercriminals. We are in the midst of many
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