Subhalakshmi Ganapathy – IT security evangelist, ManageEngine
“The hybrid work culture that the pandemic brought about has played a significant role in the present-day cybersecurity landscape. Evolving threat actors, destructive malware, and more combined with a global cybersecurity skill shortfall have managed to confound cybersecurity experts across the world, even as most organisations continue to shift out of the current hybrid work setup.
“A recent TeamLease report states that India alone is unable to fill over 30% of jobs in cybersecurity due to a massive skill gap. Any IT leader or decision-maker is likely to agree that the best strategy for keeping up with the threat landscape is regular learning and updating. Teams struggle to find time to train, which is becoming an increasingly common problem given the current shortage of skilled employees to assist them with everyday tasks. Furthermore, new technologies and vulnerabilities emerge by the time they have finished training on the old ones, which then becomes a vicious cycle of continuous training.
“Although organisations are introducing several upskilling and reskilling programmes for employees, successful upskilling takes into account more than just the technical aspect. The individual needs to strike a balance between learning skills related to the danger landscape and then putting those abilities to use in the job. The employee will then develop the inherent motivation and mindset necessary for continuous growth as a result.
“Additionally, to address the skill gap and the lack of different perspectives, it’s an absolute necessity to equally hire and nurture female employees in this field. Workforce and leadership diversity that delivers broadened perspectives is needed to tackle the threats that are growing in number and complexity.”
