Addressing the Skills Gap in Cybersecurity

Christian Damsgaard Jensen
TrackTrack 3
DescriptionA number of studies have shown an important lack of skilled employees in cybersecurity, and this skills gap is sometimes identified as one of the most important challenges to cybersecurity, and thus to the robustness of modern society (my emphasis).
There is an urgent need for cybersecurity skills at all levels, from basic security awareness among employees who use computers in their everyday work, to the decision makers who decide what systems to develop or procure. Technical security courses are slowly entering the computer science curriculum, but most of the current IT workforce have not been exposed to relevant security topics as part of their training, so we cannot wait for the knowledge and skills that enter the workforce through recent graduates to permeate the workforce.
This is why the Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU Compute) has decided to offer a part time Master of Cybersecurity as part of the Continuing Education programs. The new master education is targeted at people who manage security, e.g. as a CIO, CISO or CTO, project managers responsible for security critical software projects or experienced IT professionals who wish to transition into cybersecurity. We will discuss the motivation and goals for the design of the Master of Cybersecurity program and present our experiences offering this kind of education.  

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