The cybersecurity skills gap is real and growing; there simply aren’t enough cybersecurity employees to go around.

Cyber crime is rapidly escalating, and board rooms are taking notice. KPMG’s 2017 U.S. CEO Outlook survey shows cybersecurity risk to be among CEOs’ top concerns, yet only 40% of them feel that their organizations are fully prepared to handle a cyber attack. This isn’t surprising in light of the very serious – and worsening – cybersecurity skills gap. The cybersecurity unemployment rate was zero in 2016, and it’s expected to remain there until 2021. Coincidentally, that’s the same year by which Cybersecurity Ventures predicts there will be 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs.

Small and medium-sized firms are being hit the hardest by the cybersecurity skills gap, as the short supply of qualified talent is quickly snapped up by multinational firms that can afford to pay the high salaries and provide the “Cadillac” benefits and perks that this talent has the power to demand. The situation is expected to worsen in light of New York’s new cybersecurity law, which requires finance and insurance firms operating within the state to hire CISOs and “qualified cybersecurity personnel.”

Governments and private-sector organizations are wringing their hands over how to deal with the problem. The mayor of New York City has announced a plan to invest $30 million in in cybersecurity training, academic research, and development labs, with the goal of creating 10,000 new cybersecurity jobs over the next decade. IBM has launched what it’s calling a “new collar” jobs initiative to train both students and older workers in cybersecurity.

Outsourcing the Best Way to Immediately Bridge the Cybersecurity Skills Gap

In light of the cybersecurity skills gap, the best option for most organizations is to outsource their cybersecurity functions to a reputable cybersecurity provider such as Lazarus Alliance. Our Cybervisors® service allows organizations of all sizes to immediately retain the services of the best and brightest subject matter experts in cyberspace law, cybersecurity, risk assessments and management, audit and compliance, governance and policies, and more.

In addition to getting the help you need right away, there are many other benefits to outsourcing your enterprise’s cybersecurity functions, including:

• Significant cost savings. It is almost always less expensive to outsource cybersecurity than to hire and maintain a security team full-time in-house. Even outsourcing just part of your cybersecurity functions, such as compliance, could result in significant savings.
• Allows you to focus on your business’ core competency. Most likely, you don’t hire in-house staff to handle your own legal matters or do your own taxes. You realize that law and accounting are not part of your core competency, so you outsource those functions to attorneys and accountants. (Along the same lines, you probably outsource your building security to a security firm!) Using this logic, why would your firm handle its own cybersecurity? Outsourcing this function to a professional frees up monetary and human resources that can be used to create, innovate, and drive your business.
• Allows you to access a level of expertise most companies don’t have internally. Cyber security is a highly specialized field, and the skill set it requires is quite different than those in other IT areas. It’s also highly dynamic, with new technologies and threat vectors emerging daily. Our Cybervisors® focus on only one thing: cybersecurity. They are highly experienced in this field, they are immersed in it, and they engage in continuous education to stay abreast of the cyber threat landscape.

Initiatives like the ones New York City and IBM have launched are positive steps in the direction of bridging the cybersecurity skills gap, but training new cybersecurity professionals takes time, and organizations need help right now. Your organization can’t wait 10 years, or even six months, to get the security help it needs, at a price it can actually afford. The cybersecurity skills gap is here for the long-haul, and outsourcing is the best way to handle the problem right now.

The cybersecurity experts at Lazarus Alliance have deep knowledge of the cybersecurity field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting organizations of all sizes from security breaches. Our full-service risk assessment services and Continuum GRC RegTech software will help protect your organization from data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats.

Lazarus Alliance is proactive cybersecurity®. Call 1-888-896-7580 to discuss your organization’s cybersecurity needs and find out how we can help your organization adhere to cybersecurity regulations, maintain compliance, and secure your systems.

Back to School: Education Cybersecurity

K-12 school systems, colleges, and universities are being increasingly targeted by hackers, yet education cybersecurity is as woefully lacking as other industries, as these recent incidents illustrate:

• In November 2016, Columbia County School District in Georgia admitted to a breach of personal information belonging to its employees and their spouses, dependents and insurance beneficiaries, including their names, birth dates, and Social Security information.
• On New Year’s Eve, Los Angeles Valley College was hit by a ransomware attack that brought the school to its knees. In an echo of last year’s Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center attack, the college finally paid a ransom of over $28,000 in Bitcoin to regain access to its systems.
• In early January, Northside Independent School District, the largest school system in San Antonio, disclosed that it had fallen victim to a data breach last August that exposed the personal data of over 23,000 current and former students and employees.
• Elsewhere in Texas, the Argyle Independent School District fell victim to a spear phishing scheme that resulted in all of its employees’ W2 data being released to hackers.
• In Minnesota, South Washington County Schools was hacked by one of its own students, compromising the personal data of over 3,200 employees.

Education Cybersecurity Threats are Many and Varied

As the above incidents illustrate, K-12 schools and higher education institutions face threats on multiple fronts. Like healthcare facilities, school networks are a hacker’s treasure trove of identifying information on staff members, students, and students’ families, including names, birth dates, addresses, Social Security numbers, even medical information. Additionally, school networks are often connected to each other and to government agencies for information-sharing purposes, which means that in addition to data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other direct abuse, cyber criminals may infiltrate a school’s network for purposes of using it as a back door into another organization.

Further complicating education cybersecurity is the fact that K-12 schools, by their very nature, have a user base that includes minor children as well as adults. Not only are minor students potentially more vulnerable to social engineering schemes, they may also pose cyber threats themselves, as in the South Washington County Schools case. Students may also hack a school’s network to alter grades, cause general disruption, or even just to see if they can do it.

Third-party software applications also pose threats to education cybersecurity. Cash-strapped schools, under pressure from students and parents for more e-learning capabilities, often turn to free applications released by third parties. However, nothing is truly “free”; software developers must monetize their applications in some manner, and this could involve collecting personal data from teachers and students and selling it to other companies. Third-party developers may also practice poor data security. An independent audit of 1,200 education software applications by the nonprofit group Common Sense Education found that nearly half did not automatically encrypt students’ data.

How Schools Can Protect Themselves

Just as in every other industry, an education cybersecurity strategy must be proactive, not reactive. Teachers, other school staff, and students must all be trained on cybersecurity best practices, and schools must employ the same data security protection as organizations in other industries; for example, strong passwords that are changed regularly, two-factor authentication, and ensuring that software is kept up-to-date.

For generations, schools have taught students about “stranger danger” and how to stay safe in the real world; they should likewise be taught how to protect themselves from identity theft and other online crimes. Schools should also have specific policies regarding the use of third-party educational software in the classroom, and any software a teacher would like to use should be evaluated for data security before it is installed.

The cybersecurity experts at Lazarus Alliance have deep knowledge of the cybersecurity field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting organizations of all sizes from security breaches. We offer full-service risk assessment services and Continuum GRC software to protect companies from data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats.

Lazarus Alliance is proactive cybersecurity®. Call 1-888-896-7580 to discuss your organization’s cybersecurity needs and find out how we can help your organization secure your systems.

A recent report revealed that “More than 209,000 cybersecurity job postings in the U.S. are unfilled, and postings are up 74% over the past five years.”

Lazarus Alliance Cybervisors are the front line for the global business community, bridging this critical cybersecurity job talent shortage.

Steve Morgan, a professional acquaintance who writes about cybersecurity for Forbes published One Million Cyber security Job Openings In 2016 and revealed some jaw-dropping statistics concerning the growing deficit in hiring qualified cybersecurity employees. To make matters worse, this chasm is exacerbated by the explosion of corporate breaches impacting and even decimating businesses in financials, education, business, government, and especially healthcare.

A recent report revealed that “More than 209,000 cybersecurity jobs in the U.S. are unfilled, and postings are up 74% over the past five years, according to a Peninsula Press (a project of the Stanford University Journalism Program) 2015 analysis of numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.” It is pretty clear that while there currently is not enough talent to go around, this is only getting exponentially worse.

Another report included “A report from Cisco puts the global figure at one million cybersecurity job openings. The demand for the (cybersecurity) workforce is expected to rise to 6 million (globally) by 2019, with a projected shortfall of 1.5 million” stated Michael Brown, CEO at Symantec, the world’s largest security software vendor.” This only turns up the anxiety level in companies that are scrambling to avoid being the “breach du jour”.

Compounding matters are that there is a significant increase in regulatory and compliance requirements across all industries. Every compliance framework out there went through major overhauls in 2015. In some cases as is the case for the SSAE 16, doubled in complexity. The situation just got more expensive and complex.

The only clear answers for businesses that want to remain viable in the global cyber threatscape come in the form of increased efficiencies and leveraged resources. Two of the best solutions that have emerged to address these challenges are:

Retain a Cybervisor®:

Retaining the help from dedicated and verifiable cybersecurity experts costs less than the expense of hiring just one (1) cybersecurity employee. And yes, that was a plural, not a singular expert. With professional Cybervisor services, companies get the expertise of many seasoned experts who collaborate and stand together to support their clients.

Automation is Your Friend:

It’s time to work smarter and not harder! By utilizing automated cybersecurity and GRC tools, we have discovered that employees are so much more efficient and effective. In fact utilizing a tool like ITAM consistently makes the cybersecurity, GRC assessments and reporting processes a whopping 180% more efficient on average. When time is money, ITAM is like getting three (3) dedicated cybersecurity employees for less than the cost of one (1).

Learn more about Lazarus Alliance and why Lazarus Alliance is Proactive Cybersecurity™.