Be Prepared for Cyberattacks

One of my favorite actors is Paul Giamatti. His performances John Adams and Cinderella Man are spot on. Whether screaming pugilistic encouragement to Russell Crowe or reluctantly accepting acting advice from a family of cinephiles, he always seems to sum the situation up with a sentence or two. In the 2015 disaster flick, San Andreas, Giamatti (son of former baseball commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti) plays Caltech seismologist, Dr. Lawrence Hayes.

During a TV interview after the first earthquake, Hayes delivers an impassioned warning that things are going to get worse: 

People need to know that the shaking is not over. It’s not aftershocks I’m talking about. San Francisco will get hit again and it’s going to be a bigger monster this time. … It will be so big that even though it’s happening here in California, you will feel it on the East Coast.

Fortunately Dwayne ‘The Rock” Johnson comes along to save the day and inspire Californians to persevere.  

While San Andreas is a semi-enjoyable way to spend two hours, there are other earthquake-like scenarios that are anything but. One of these is a cyberattack that breaches a firm’s protection of its valuable data.

The bad news is that these attacks are increasing in frequency and cost, and there aren’t enough skilled cybersecurity pros to protect the millions of vulnerable networks worldwide. The global IT governance association ISACA just released their Cybersecurity Jobs Index, an at-a-glance summary of key statistics and insights on the state of cybersecurity jobs and the growing gap between supply and demand. 

The big problem is that many security workers aren’t adequately trained to handle these new and increasingly frequent attacks. The Index shows a nearly 10-point jump in the past year among security pros who say that fewer than half of job candidates are qualified at time of hire. In fact the shortage of skilled cybersecurity pros is getting worse all the time.

Christos Dimitriadis, Chair of ISACA’s Board of Directors, warns that “The cybersecurity skills gap is quickly turning into a chasm. ... ISACA’s 2016 Cybersecurity Jobs Index shows that the number and cost of a breach are on the rise, but so too are the number of cybersecurity job openings and length of time it takes to fill an opening.”

No doubt about it, this shortage of properly trained and credentialed security pros is endangering the private data of hundreds of millions of innocent people. As Dimitriadis said, “It’s a perfect storm that leaves organizations vulnerable — so a greater focus on cybersecurity upskilling is critical.”

The silver lining to this dark cloud is that there are some really great cybersecurity trainings available. One of the best places to begin your career as a security expert is with TestOut’s Security Pro. Security Pro gives you the knowledge and skills to maintain PCs and setup corporate networks, and especially how to those networks from a myriad of threats.

Just as the San Andreas Fault will one day snap in a devastating fashion, every organization sooner or later will have to deal with a malicious hack. Start earning your Security Pro certification today and before long, you’ll be the “Cybersecurity Rock” that saves the day.

About the Author — Calvin Harper is an associate editor for GoCertify and a veteran of the publishing industry. Calvin's biceps are almost as big as the Rock's.