The third week of 2021’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month focuses on cybersecurity careers and encourages people to ‘Explore, Experience and Share’ the exciting and varied opportunities available.
It’s an important issue across an industry which suffers from a chronic talent shortage and underlines the need for organizations to attract a wider pool of people from every background. For example, research from (ISC2) – the cybersecurity training and certification organization – shows that although the global cybersecurity workforce has grown to 3.5 million (up by 700,000 in a year), there remains 3.12 million unfilled jobs around the world.
Part of the challenge faced by the industry is attracting people into entry level roles, with many deterred by the idea that cybersecurity careers are only open to people with specific, technical qualifications or very focused career paths.
Building A Career In Cyber
The reality, however, can be very different. In September, we talked to our Head of Cloud Engineering, Matt Cavey, about his interesting and unconventional pathway into his cybersecurity career. Having originally set his sights on a career as a chef, Matt’s route through higher education opened up a wide range of options in the IT industry and eventually, into cybersecurity.
As Matt said: “It’s really important to remember that roles within our industry are extremely diverse and can be both technical and non-technical. For some people, the idea of a ‘technical’ role is a barrier. I’ve worked with project managers, for example, who didn’t have deep technology skills, but who could manage technical projects to perfection. It’s a huge field with high demand and I would encourage people to be open-minded about the opportunities it can offer.”
Matt’s story is by no means unique, with Danny Lopez – our CEO – having spent a number of years earlier in his career working for the UK government, including five years as the British Consul General to New York and Director General for UK trade and investment across North America. With subsequent experience built in the finance and technology sectors, he strongly believes this varied background helps him better understand the way organizations approach IT in general, and cybersecurity in particular.
It’s this recruitment ethos that means we’re always on the lookout for top cybersecurity talent, irrespective of the career journey people have been on. In the past few months alone, we’ve been delighted to welcome some amazing new people onto our UK and US teams, adding to our capabilities across the engineering, customer support, sales and marketing disciplines.
That search for talent is ongoing – to check out our latest job opportunities, click here.
