Cybersecurity Skills Gap – Lack of Expertise or Lack of Professionals?

The Critical Need to Address the Cybersecurity Skills Gap

There has been a steep escalation of cyberattacks in recent years and organizations are rushing to recruit skilled professionals, leaving the market depleted of available talent. On the other hand, many organizations are not able to invest in cybersecurity training as budgets have been cut or drastically reduced. These circumstances are creating a gap to fill key roles in these areas of concern:

1. Skilled professionals to manage, administer and support organizational security and operations.
2. Skilled cyber-engineers to design security systems and develop secure software and tools.
3. General cybersecurity professionals with a baseline knowledge of the threats and risks, and what this means in the context of each departmental role within an organization.

Whether it is due to lack of talent or lack of training, this skills gap has become increasingly more impactful on businesses in recent years as reported in the fifth annual global study from the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA) and industry analyst firm Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG). According to this report, heavier workload, unfilled positions and worker burnout are contributing to the skills gap. An alarming 95% of the professionals surveyed believe that the gap has not improved in recent years.

Untrained Employees Are Your Biggest Cybersecurity Risk

Along with the cybersecurity skills gap, there can be other factors that contribute to a company’s cyber vulnerabilities. Even if you have the right IT and Security team, the lack of training provided to employees throughout your business could be your biggest cybersecurity risk. In fact, 77% of cyberattacks are a result of human error. Untrained or under-educated employees are easily susceptible to phishing scams that can lead to ransomware and malware attacks, wreaking havoc on your organization’s data and networks.

These types of attacks are becoming even more frequent as businesses migrate to a remote work model, so employees are less likely to receive valuable cybersecurity training or understand the insurmountable damage associated with falling victim to attacks of this sort. These additional gaps in training and communication can leave you vulnerable, even with a full-scale IT & Security department on staff.

Tips to Close the Skill Gaps Within Your Organization

1. Conduct An Internal Skills Audit
   • Evaluating your IT team as well as all other employees within your organization is the first step towards strengthening your cybersecurity posture. An internal skills audit can identify those areas of your business that require attention with respect to training, hiring or outsourcing services.

2. Provide Comprehensive Cybersecurity Training for All Employees
   • Once you have a better understanding of the current cybersecurity competence level of your employees, you can map those areas of training and continuing education that are needed. Consider hosting monthly cybersecurity training sessions on topics like phishing, citing not only examples of phishing emails, but also detailing real-life cases and the damages associated with such attacks. This will allow you to expand the overall skillset of your entire organization. In addition to training for all, it is imperative that your IT team continue to build their cybersecurity knowledge base. Cyberattacks are constantly evolving, so the education of your IT and Security professionals should as well.

3. Grow Your Cybersecurity Team
   • This can be the most challenging task in closing the cybersecurity skills gap. Small IT teams can become overwhelmed quickly, especially within large companies. If your IT team’s bandwidth is exceeded, that can leave limited availability for strategic development and/or continuing education. Investing in cybersecurity talent can strengthen your cybersecurity posture and prevent the skills gap within your organization from growing.

4. Securus360 Managed eXtended Detection & Response (MXDR)
   • Securus360’s Managed eXtended Detection & Response helps to close the skills gap within your organization by delivering advanced detection and response capabilities as a service, thereby removing the complexity and cost of building an in-house, next generation security operations center (SOC).

Expand Your Cybersecurity Posture

While there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution to closing the cybersecurity skills gap, investing in a comprehensive cybersecurity service allows your IT team to automate tasks and create a stronger overall cybersecurity strategy. Cyberattacks are increasing in frequency and severity daily, with associated costs skyrocketing. All organizations are vulnerable to these cyberattacks, no matter the size or industry.

Integrating an all-inclusive cybersecurity platform like Securus360’s MXDR platform will provide 24/7/365 monitoring and protection of your company. Complete visibility across your entire infrastructure is essential to effectively manage and detect threats. Securus360 utilizes an award-winning, cloud native approach that combines machine learning, security automation and human intelligence to create a high speed and high touch cyber defense solution that proactively hunts, detects and helps neutralize advanced threats before they can impact your business.

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