Australia’s cybersecurity skills shortage is only continuing to increase. Cybercrime is an incredibly lucrative industry and it’s estimated that if cybercrime were a country, it would be the third largest economy after the US and China, valued at approximately USD$6 trillion in 2021. Data breaches and ransomware attacks are only going to increase, which puts even more pressure on companies working to defend themselves, their clients, and their governments against cyberattacks.
According to an article in the Australian Financial Review, the number of unfilled positions in cybersecurity is forecast to hit 30,000 in the next four years. A quick job search on Seek for security roles shows that there are currently over 600 vacant positions advertised across Australia and over 15,000 vacant positions for information technology roles. The question that any hiring manager is asking is: ‘How do we fill these roles?’
At FifthDomain, we work very closely with our clients to help them identify existing people in their organisations that have the potential to work in cyber security despite not having any formal training or qualifications in cybersecurity. In 2020, we partnered with the Australian Defence Force to help them identify talent using our Assessor platform.
Using our technology, we were able to identify personnel within the Arms Corps who had never had any formal training in cyber security but had the skills and the aptitude to learn. One example was a tank commander who had no experience in cyber security but was identified as suitable to help the Defence Force build their cyber capability.
The number of cyber jobs that need to be filled far outstrips the number of Cyber security university and TAFE graduates – so how do we quickly train people up so that they are ready to respond to real-life cyber incidents? FifthDomain’s platform allows people to take cyber security training courses where they can launch virtual machines (VMs) from their own personal device and go through the steps that real cyber professionals do to triage and respond to cyber attacks.
Cyber security affects all industries, which is why hiring people with diverse work and life experience will help organisations to defend themselves against adversaries. The infamous hacking group Lapsus$, who was responsible for major security breaches against Microsoft, Okta, and Samsung, has members that are still teenagers. If companies continue to put out job advertisements that require entry-level cybersecurity analysts to have a minimum five years of industry experience and IT certifications, then we’re indirectly letting the bad guys win.
FifthDomain’s platform can be used to facilitate labs learning, competitions, and assessments by cyber educators and workplaces to quickly train and upskill their students or employees. We are also proud to be a finalist in the Business & Industry Solution of the Year category for the national AIIA awards, which will be held on October 20 in Melbourne.
If you’d like to know more about how FifthDomain can help your security team or students, please get in contact today.
