This past Friday, our region hosted BSides Knoxville, an event developed by and for the information security community. This sold-out event featured sessions on challenges in protecting systems and data, multiple network risk assessments, and critical skills for cybersecurity professionals.
In the past year, more than 40 similar events have been held in Atlanta, Austin, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto; Washington D.C.; as well as in Austria, Brazil, Chile, Germany, Iceland and Poland.
The list of BSides’ Knoxville sponsors — Cisco, My Digital Shield, Sword & Shield, RedSeal Networks, Acuvant+Fishnet Security, TrustedSec, Contextual Security — along with the fact that our community is home to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Y-12 National Security Complex demonstrate the importance of information security to our region.
The demand for cybersecurity specialists extends beyond the computer industry and governmental agencies. Retailers, financial institutions and healthcare providers collect, process, and store confidential records on servers and transmit that data across networks.
They are increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks. In the past year, U.S. corporations including Premera Blue Cross (up to 11 million customer records), Anthem (80 million customer and employee records), Sony Pictures (over 173,000 emails and 30,000 documents), Staples (more than 1.16 million credit cards), Home Depot (56 million credit and debit cards and 53 million customer email addresses), JPMorgan Chase (76 million accounts), and Community Health Systems (4.5 million patient records) were victims of cyber attacks.
Such attacks are expected to increase in number and sophistication.
McAfee Labs’ 2015 Threats Predictions Report forecasts that “cyber espionage attacks will continue to increase in frequency.” The World Economic Forum identified cybersecurity as one of this year’s biggest risks. Speaking at a January meeting of the organization, Cisco CEO John Chambers said, “There is no data center or network in the world that hasn’t been hacked. If you watched the number of attacks, they’re going up exponentially. This year’s going to be much worse than last year.”
Despite forecasts, a critical shortage exists of skilled information security industry professionals.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 209,000 information security jobs in the U.S. are unfilled, and postings have increased 74 percent over the past five years. Colleges and universities must heed the call to train cybersecurity professionals.
Aligning K-12 and college IT curriculum can provide career pathways, and working with industry to assess needs, skills and develop degrees and certificates in cybersecurity can provide professionals who will address the security challenges of the foreseeable future.
Pellissippi State Community College stands ready to answer this call.
Dr. Ted A. Lewis, vice president of academic affairs at Pellissippi State Community College, may be reached at talewis@pstcc.edu.
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