Is the IT industry facing security skills shortage?
The data gathered by MSCI ESG Research reveals the fact that many IT security organizations are short staffed and hence pushing the security team to its limits. Such under-manned enterprise organizations (i.e. those with over 1,000 employees) are finding it ‘extremely hard’ or ‘somewhat difficult’ to recruit and hire security professionals in the current market.
What is the problem?
The existing security staff is too busy in resolving the daily security problems that they get no time to plan and upgrade their technical skills. Also, these security crews are working on tools that are not only too complex to handle but also take too much time.
The concerning thing is that this situation is not getting noticed in Washington, Silicon Valley or leading computer science-focused universities. The article by Jon Oltsik in Network World elaborates the three trends identified in the research that even worsens this security skills shortage.
Remedy?
The Golden Rule to follow here is to either recruit or outsource. This lack of trained manpower is thus an opportunity for leading security service providers like BT, Dell, HP, IBM, Unisys, and Verizon. Companies like CSC, L3, Lockheed-Martin, McDonnell Douglas, Raytheon, and SAIC can also fill this demand gap and crack into the commercial sector in a big way.
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