E R T N
P
X
E INIO
OP
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.
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.
O
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.
www.intelligentciso.com
|
Issue 14
Bridget Kenyon,
Global CISO at
Thales eSecurity
Understanding the cybersecurity
skills gap escalating and this is impacting the
threat and compliance landscape.
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. How to potentially bridge the gap
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 unofficial guerrilla
cyberconflicts which only seem to be
Whether it is a malware attack, a DDoS
attack or some excitingly innovative
approach we have yet to encounter,
employees can either play a pivotal
role in protecting organisations or
significantly increase the risk we face
when it comes to information protection.
To better prepare staff, organisations
should already be ensuring employees
at all levels in the organisation are
informed, actively engaged and trained
to make appropriate decisions. This
is not a new challenge but continues
to post a threat for most businesses:
our latest Data Threat Report showed
that almost half of IT experts still cite
executives and employees as a point of
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