Meeting Industrial Demand for Skills in Information Security Education
Project Description
The lack of qualified specialists is a big problem in the IT industry due to the rapid digitization of modern society. This problem is particularly difficult in the field of information security where the fast development pace is further accelerated by the "arm's race" between the attack and defense. As a result, the set of skills needed for successful careers in the IT security industry evolves at a rapid pace, which presents challenges for academic institutions responsible for the adequate education of the future workforce.
The goal of the project was to develop the methodology for objective analysis of the skill gap in information security and to deploy it for the German speaking countries in Europe. The main idea for the methodology to be developed was to provide a systematic comparison of job ads (as a representation of the skills needed in industry) and academic curricula (as a representation of the skills delivered by academic programs). To avoid the linguistic issues of a strongly multilingual job market and academic environments, the project focus was limited to German speaking countries, and hence the project consortium had one partner for each major German speaking country in Europe (University of Liechtenstein focusing on Switzerland).
The project output comprises the new tools for job ad and curricula analysis as well as the findings obtained from deployment of these tools to skill gaps analysis in information security in German speaking countries. Several categories of information security skills have been identified with strong gaps between the demand in industry and the supply in academia. e.g., software and application security, security management, requirements engineering, compliance and certification. Based on the results of our analysis, recommendations were provided for future curricula development in cybersecurity so as to decrease the identified skill gaps. The tools developed for the project can be used for periodic reassessment of skill gaps and are available as open source under https://tinyurl.com/EMIDSISE
The goal of the project was to develop the methodology for objective analysis of the skill gap in information security and to deploy it for the German speaking countries in Europe. The main idea for the methodology to be developed was to provide a systematic comparison of job ads (as a representation of the skills needed in industry) and academic curricula (as a representation of the skills delivered by academic programs). To avoid the linguistic issues of a strongly multilingual job market and academic environments, the project focus was limited to German speaking countries, and hence the project consortium had one partner for each major German speaking country in Europe (University of Liechtenstein focusing on Switzerland).
The project output comprises the new tools for job ad and curricula analysis as well as the findings obtained from deployment of these tools to skill gaps analysis in information security in German speaking countries. Several categories of information security skills have been identified with strong gaps between the demand in industry and the supply in academia. e.g., software and application security, security management, requirements engineering, compliance and certification. Based on the results of our analysis, recommendations were provided for future curricula development in cybersecurity so as to decrease the identified skill gaps. The tools developed for the project can be used for periodic reassessment of skill gaps and are available as open source under https://tinyurl.com/EMIDSISE
