As I had mentioned previously, this year, I’m going back to school. Not to take classes but to teach a course at my alma mater, Fanshawe College. I did this about a decade ago and thought it was interesting, so I was excited to give it another go. Additionally, after a friend mentioned that their kid wanted to learn Python, I developed an Intro to Python aim

At a time when layoffs are painfully common, now might not seem like a great time to look for a new job or switch careers. Or, is it? The cybersecurity skills gap has not gone away, and companies of all kinds are in need of people with knowledge in this area. And, it’s not just the wealth of jobs that make a cybersecurity career compelling right now.

The cybersecurity talent gap is real. The 2019/2020 Official Annual Cybersecurity Jobs Report predicts that there will be 3.5 million security jobs left unfilled globally by 2021. The cybersecurity profession hit a 0% unemployment rate and the pay is good. So, why are security leaders struggling to fill positions? It could be because they are looking for th

If the global cybercrime forecast took the form of a weather report, it might go something like this: The extended outlook calls for continued online lawlessness, scattered malware attacks and an ongoing blizzard of data breaches.After all, with experts predicting that the cybercrime epidemic will cost the world $6 trillion annually by 2021 as the shortage o

The cybersecurity industry has a problem: In 2019, women made up only 20 percent of the cybersecurity workforce. This statistic would be alarming in any industry given the amount of research that espouses the benefits of more balanced, diverse workforces. But it is especially troublesome in cybersecurity, where we already face a serious skills shortage. So,

In March 2017, (ISC)2 published the results of its annual “Global Information Security Workforce Study,” a survey of 19,641 people working in the cybersecurity field across 170 different countries. Of the thousands of people surveyed, only 11 percent were women in cybersecurity. That statistic, coupled with the report’s conclusion that by 2

Women in cybersecurity now represent 20 percent of the workforce, according to Cybersecurity Ventures. There’s still a long way to go in closing the industry gender gap, especially when you consider that women make up over half the U.S. workforce. However, the security industry has also made progress, and that’s something to be proud of. In 2013,

Not too long ago, there was a one-size-fits-all assumption about cybersecurity jobs. The security professional was hired to manage security systems and read logs — maybe handle audits and ensure industry compliance. Now, the job landscape for cybersecurity professionals is becoming more specialized, and even those specialized areas break down into even more

Of all the weird quirks I had as a kid, I never expected that my fascination with untying knots in the yarn from the arts and crafts box in fourth grade would benefit me in my job today. I recently did an interview for Business Radio X about one of IBM Security’s initiatives to raise awareness about careers in cybersecurity among middle school girls. T

As an independent information security consultant, I am often asked what it takes to forge a positive cybersecurity career path and stand out in the field. I tell people that working for yourself is not for everyone. An independent security professional must constantly seek out new business, unsure where that next bit of income is going to come from. It̵

Last week I had the wonderful honor of being a presenter in the Cisco Networking Academy Find Yourself in The Future Series. To date this series has attracted over 9000 live attendees, which is testament to the extremely high levels of interest in technology careers in this region as well as the extraordinary efforts of the APAC marketing team. One figure bl

If you’re a security professional you’ve probably heard we’re going to be 2 million security professionals worldwide by 2017. At least that’s what speakers at the Digital Skills Committee at the House of Lords in London said recently. The basic thought is that we’re not training enough students to be security professionals and t

I flew back to MIT recently for the GNU 30th Anniversary Celebration and Hackathon, thanks to a generous travel scholarship from the Free Software Foundation. All I had to do was never, ever run any proprietary javascript in my browser and something something something about firstborns. Seemed like a net win. The hackathon itself was fun. I spent most of it