As part of our dedicated Cyber Security Week, PublicTechnology brought together experts from government, industry, and academia to examine the biggest security skills challenges, and how they can be met
As the threat landscape becomes ever-more diffuse, diverse, and dangerous, the need for cyber security skills in organisations across all sectors will continue to increase – and rapidly.
Recent government research found that half of all businesses and public bodies lack the necessary basic security skills in their current workforce, with one in three reporting a need for additional advanced expertise.
The need of public sector entities – which are required to process and protect the most sensitive citizen data, while supporting front-line service delivery – is as great as any. But government agencies, local authorities and NHS trusts also face some of the biggest barriers to accessing and retaining skills; resources are often stretched incredibly thin, and it can be difficult, if not impossible, to offer competitive compensation to the most prized talent.
In this webinar event – hosted as part of PublicTechnology’s dedicated Cyber Security Week of specialised content – we brought together a panel of public sector and industry experts. The discussion covered the biggest issues faced by public bodies in ensuring they have the skills they need – both basic cyber awareness and best practice across the breadth of the organisation, and more sophisticated specialist technical skills – as well as ways in which these challenges can be met.
Topics covered include the role of diversity, equity and inclusion in building skills, and the need for clear career and development pathways into the industry, as well as the challenges of how to upskill existing staff in cyber and the need to engage senior leaders in security best practice.
The panel for the event – which can be viewed in full in the video above – included:
Anitha Chinnaswamy – deputy director at the Cyber Security Innovation Centre, Aston Business School
Declan Doyle – head of professional services at the Cyber and Fraud Centre – Scotland
Boglarka Ronto – global head of Cyber Practice, Resilion and CREST council member
Dave Allan – chief executive officer, CYSIAM and CREST council member
Sam Trendall – editor, PublicTechnology (chair)
