US Not Training Enough Cybersecurity Experts

graychase writes "Homeland Security's cybersecurity director, Richard Marshall, warns that universities aren't turning out enough cybersecurity experts and urges greater scholarship funding. 'Look at all the great football and basketball programs. They're all on scholarships. They're not playing for fun — they're playing for money.'"

Comments

All it takes...

[garyisabusyguy]

...is state subsidized computer "crime" education.

Israel has had state sponsored training for decades and looky looky they have plenty of forensic experts...

In the US we threaten anybody that touches these tools with prison and let the mpaa sue Professors that attempt to study anything remotely like security.

Yeah, it's about the money

[HockeyPuck]

Starting salary at IBM is about $50k.
Additional Compensation:
---Employee Stock Purchase Plan.
---401k
---Options (maybe)
    Pre-requisites: Atleast 4 years of college, optional advanced degrees. Experience with security and engineering solutions.

Starting Salary of Lebron James: ~$4m per year.
Additional Compensation:
---$90m Nike Contract
      Pre-requisites: Ability to dribble and score with a basketball better than any other kid in high school.

Which would you choose?

Re:Yeah, it's about the money

[Skyshadow]

Lebron James is one of the best basketball players ever to live, not just some run-of-the-mill pickup player.

Let's make a slightly more appropriate comparison: Samuel Palmisano, CEO of IBM, made $1.8 million last year, plus a bonus of $4.75 million and $13.5 million in stock options. So really, the top performers in tech don't really do so poorly either, especially considering that their career is probably a bit longer than Lebron's.

It's hard to learn

[Anonymous Coward]

when the government and industry decide to move away from making systems and software increasingly more secure and instead focus on draconian laws with punitive sentences that start at a decade for benign acts regardless of intent or whether you informed the target of their weakness and how to correct it.

Security through sentencing.

Re:They're not seeing a primary source.

[centuren]

The whole statement seems to show a wildly inaccurate perspective on how education and industry go together:

"Homeland Security's cybersecurity director, Richard Marshall, warns that universities aren't turning out enough cybersecurity experts and urges greater scholarship funding.

Universities do not turn out experts, period. If one needs more national security experts, the place to look isn't for upcoming graduates from Harvard's "Department of National Security", because no such thing exists. Hopefully, 4-year degrees in cybersecurity don't/won't exist, either. Universities educate students, giving them knowledge and skills to put them in a situation where they can be trained into these rolls. I went to an engineering school, and the CIA had a booth at the job fair every year, and 3 or 4 of my friends interned with the NSA, at least one of whom accepted a job there after he finished his graduate degree(s).

Richard Marshall's statement seems absurd; if they need more cybersecurity experts then they should recruit and train more people. With today's unemployment rate, it's not like there aren't people with the education out there looking for jobs. If you want more experts, hire people and train them. Scholarships might put more inexperienced graduates into the hiring pool, but does nothing to produce more cybersecurity experts. People in Marshall's position need to start realizing that companies and agencies alike invest in developing employees when it comes to jobs as specific as cybersecurity. Just throwing more certification graduates into the world isn't likely to improve anything.