Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2019. Read them in this 11th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by Grant Wernick, co-founder & CEO of Insight Engines
A Better Equipped Cybersecurity Workforce
In 2019 we might start making some progress towards solving the cybersecurity talent gap. The current lack of educational opportunities and training programs will remain a problem over the next few years. Technology, however, will start to play a role in bridging a previously divided gap between the people who have the investigative mindset to be successful in cybersecurity, yet lack the more formal, technical training.
Advances in AI, machine learning, and natural language processing are opening new avenues that allow people to speak to and ask questions of their data, without needing to know how to write a line of code. At its core, cybersecurity relies on curiosity and problem-solving. How many people in an organization fit that profile as opposed to having a four-year degree in computer science?
Opening up cybersecurity opportunities to non-traditional applicants both amplifies and diversifies the workforce. At the other end of the keyboard, there’s a real person. New perspectives, experiences, and points of view that lead to better insights about the opposition are going to be pivotal to the security workforce in the upcoming years. Cybercriminals have diverse backgrounds, and understanding your opponent is key to defeating them. So having a diverse team of cybersecurity professionals is going to be an advantage.
Technology will augment human intelligence by making the data people need accessible and easy to understand. The cybersecurity talent gap isn’t so much about the lack of people with the right skills as it is the lack of tools that can give access to people who are right for the job the ability to do so.
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About the Author
Grant Wernick is the co-founder & CEO of Insight Engines, a Silicon Valley start-up founded with the mission to empower humans to garner insights from their machine data. With its patented natural language processing technology, Insight Engines enables people to easily ask questions from complex data, thereby helping to build the intuitive organization. Insight Engines is backed by investors including August Capital, Splunk, and Google Ventures, and serves some of the largest Fortune 500 companies in financial services, healthcare and public sector.
