Security News > 2021 > November > EU needs more cybersecurity graduates, says ENISA infosec agency – pointing at growing list of master's degree courses

The EU needs more cybersecurity graduates to plug the political bloc's shortage of skilled infosec bods, according to a report from the ENISA online security agency.

In a new report titled "Addressing the EU Cybersecurity Skills Shortage and Gap Through Higher Education", academics Jason Nurse and Konstantinos Adamos, together with ENISA's Athanasios Grammatopoulos and Fabio Di Franco, said the European Union needs to get more students signing up for cybersecurity degrees.

The report found that the majority of cybersecurity degrees offered across the 27-states - 77 per cent - are at master's degree level.

Nurse said of the ENISA research that while degree programmes in EU universities broadly meet the EU infosec industry's needs, the "Less technical" sides of cyber security need more focus.

The quality of education offered through cybersecurity degrees is vital, even if they're not always a method of breaking into the industry for people with minimal tech skills.

Nurse said: "In my opinion, the prominence of master's programmes as compared to undergraduate degrees is not necessarily because of the prerequisite need for a great degree of computing skills. This may be more an artefact of how a majority of existing masters courses have been developed - and the harsh truth is that unfortunately, many people still view cybersecurity as just an extension of computing."

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2021/11/26/enisa_cybersecurity_degrees_report/