Thousands of cybersecurity jobs to be had

The Electronic Transactions Development Agency (ETDA) aims to expand its cybersecurity workforce to 12,000 by 2021 in order to comply with the national cybersecurity scheme and contain rising cyber-attacks.

“There are at least 4,000 cybersecurity positions open in the local market, and that number will jump threefold by 2021, in line with the global trend,” said ETDA deputy executive director Chaichana Mitrpant.

For fiscal 2018, the agency will allocate 100 million baht to train 1,000 cybersecurity specialists to serve under the prime minister.

To push development of training programmes, the ETDA signed a memorandum of understanding with five local universities: Mahidol, Thammasat, Silpakorn, Thai Chamber of Commerce and Rangsit.

The cybersecurity law, set to come into force in mid-2018, will require an upgrade of cybersecurity workforces. Regulators are also likely to put in place more stringent requirements for cybersecurity frameworks at important public institutions such as the Bank of Thailand.

The new regulations will call for cybersecurity assignments and the establishment of a Security Operations Centre, as well as require that cybersecurity staff have investigative and forensic skills and the ability to serve as “first tier” incident responders.

“If the needs of Thailand are met, we can export these experts to countries like Japan, where they are in high demand,” Mr Chaichana said.

As of early 2017, of the total 8 million internet-connected devices, at least 2 million had been infected by malicious code and become tools for hackers to attack other victims through Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and spam email.

“The number of incidents this year in on a par with the number last year, as business firms have increased awareness around cybersecurity and no high-profile political attacks — like the f5 attack to protest the National Single Gateway — have occurred so far this year,” Mr Chaichana said.

According to Forbes, cyberthreats continue to grow and will drive the number of cybersecurity positions to 3.5 million in 2021.

In 2016, global spending on cybersecurity products and services exceeded US$8 billion (262 billion baht), according to Gartner.

Demand for the following cybersecurity functions is expected to grow in the next few years: system developer and designer; system administrator; system auditor; threat responder; data analyst evidence collector; and investigator.

The Thailand Professional Qualification Institute (Public Organisation) and the Department of Skill Development will take steps to increase the number of Thais qualified to perform these functions.

Prinya Hom-anek, secretary of the Thailand Information Security Association, said Thailand has 500 advanced international certificate experts, still a relatively low number.

The ETDA this year hosted Cyber SEA Games 2017, at which 10 Asean countries took part in a Capture the Flag-style cybersecurity competition.