How to conquer a skills shortage

I’ve previously posted about the IT skills shortage (or skills mismatch). Whenever a new technology is widely embraced (like the cloud), a skills “mismatch” of sorts rears its inconvenient head.

As more C-level and boards of directors focus on shoring up a company’s cyber-resilience capabilities, they’re bumping up against a rather common hurdle: The IT skills shortage. Or, more specifically, a cybersecurity skills shortage.

According to the (ISC)² 2022 Cybersecurity Workforce Study:

“We estimate the size of the global cybersecurity workforce at 4.7 million people—the highest we’ve ever recorded. According to our research, however, the cybersecurity field is still critically in need of more professionals. To adequately protect cross-industrial enterprises from increasingly complex modern threats, organizations are trying to fill the worldwide gap of 3.4 million cybersecurity workers.”

Going on: “Sixty percent of respondents report that a cybersecurity staffing shortage is placing their organizations at risk. The consequences of cybersecurity staff shortages are real and create challenges for organizational success.”

As if securing the company’s most valuable assets from everything from human error to nefarious threat actors wasn’t enough. There are more—very profitable—reasons to get your cybersecurity staffing up to par. According to Accenture’s Reinventing for resilience: A CEO's guide, “… companies that exhibited high scores in both technology and talent increase their probability of stronger resilience by a factor of four.” In other words, companies that have embraced technology as a differentiator, and have their staffing practices in order, are four times more likely to thrive in turbulent times—and to come out even further ahead when normal times resume.

So, what are you going to do? You could just throw money at the problem and go on a cybersecurity hiring binge. According to McKinsey, that’s not likely to address your risk problem. McKinsey says that staffing should be prioritized so that the company’s most valuable assets are protected. Doesn’t sound easy or inexpensive.

It turns out that you’ve got some options.

NetApp can help you with your need for cybersecurity talent. Cybersecurity is built in (as opposed to “bolted on”) to NetApp^® ONTAP^® data management software. By simply using what you already have available to you, you can reduce—or at least defer—some of the need to boost cybersecurity staffing. With capabilities in Zero Trust, ransomware, and platform security, along with various types of encryption, replication, and certifications that all align with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, NetApp has you covered until you can get a handle on your hiring. See more of what NetApp can do to help make you more resilient. If you like videos, invest about 20 minutes of your time to see for yourself how security is built into NetApp ONTAP data management software.