Cybersecurity: getting it right

Clyde Seepersad

Cybersecurity is one of the hottest topics in IT right now. More specifically, a lot of attention has been given to the glaring talent shortfall.

In a global survey of IT professionals conducted by Intel Security and the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 2016, 82% of respondents admitted to a lack of cybersecurity skills. Worryingly, one in four further reported that their organisations had lost proprietary data as a result of their cybersecurity skills gap.

With a snowballing amount of business and personal information being hosted on the cloud, filling the gap in cybersecurity skills has become a task of unprecedented urgency. Did you know that there are seven classes of cyber attackers, all of whom have an arsenal of attacks at their disposal?

In response to these threats, the market for security tools has never been more saturated. Regardless of whether you are already using any of these tools, it is important to continually assess your current security needs and readiness, and consider whether you need to upgrade. It might be that you should actually reduce the number of tools you are implementing, thus reducing your overheads and streamlining your business.

With cybersecurity, there is no one-size-fitsall solution. However, a long-term investment in training your employees in such hard skills as security assessment, intrusion detection, attack mitigation and security solution implementation, is a sure place to start.

Fortify your cybersecurity skills with the Linux Security Fundamentals (LFS216) online training course, which provides a comprehensive overview of the security challenges that can affect almost every system. A free sample chapter is available to download here: http://bit.ly/2o50llt.