Security News > 2021 > February > Your security technology is only as strong as your team

Businesses aren't shy about investing in cybersecurity, but are organizations getting the maximum return on those investments? Too often, businesses focus their spending on technology and neglect to use hiring-and especially training-practices that would bring real value to the people responsible for deploying and managing that technology, and, ultimately, setting the company's cybersecurity posture.

According to a demand/supply heat map by CyberSeek, a project funded by the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education, the United States began December 2020 with more than 520,000 unfilled cybersecurity jobs-in a field where only about 940,000 were employed.

Investing in cyber professionals, as opposed to just buying the latest technology, allows businesses to achieve a larger scope of cyber defense usage over time as security teams improve, while also allowing for flexibility to achieve operational efficacy.

Investing more in people is an obvious answer to improving enterprise cybersecurity, but technology investments can soon run up against the well-established shortage of skilled cyber professionals, particularly if companies are looking for them to suddenly appear out of universities or other educational tracks.

Reports from the likes of CSIS, the professional association ISACA and the Commerce and Homeland Security departments have found that employers increasingly have concerns over how well educational programs are preparing students to actually meet an organization's cybersecurity needs.

No matter where cybersecurity personnel come from, effective cyber upskilling programs, in which students or employees work on realistic challenges that accurately reflect what they'll deal with on the job, are essential to security.

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