Lack of Cybersecurity Personnel in the Healthcare Industry Week 9 post

With the emergence of the cyber threats to medical providers, you would think that hiring employees with cybersecurity skills would be plentiful. However, according to ISACA Chief Innovation Officer Frank Schettini, there is a huge skills gap. He “found that nearly one in three organizations take six months or more to fill an open cybersecurity role. Additionally, 37 percent of organizations said that basically 1 in 4 candidates are qualified.” (Schettini as quoted in Snell, 2017). In fact looking at the chart below you can see that most cybersecurity jobs are being posted in the professional, scientific, and technical field.

Figure 1. Cybersecurity Jobs posted in 2014. Retrieved from: http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20151024/MAGAZINE/310249962

Right now there is a large job market for cybersecurity workers, thus it makes sense that not only healthcare, but all markets are finding it hard to find employees. “The supply is 10% of the demand—from the Defense Department to banks to cybersecurity companies.” (Inbar as quoted in Conn, 2015). “Demand is expected to rise to 6 million globally by 2019, with a projected shortfall of 1.5 million” (Brown as quoted in Morgan, 2016).

That is why ISACA created the Cybersecurity Nexus Training Platform. They created it in order to assist employees gain that technical on hands training. Of course they are not the only source of training, but this is one example in which healthcare can aid in making sure they are ensuring security of their information and information systems. With the shortfall of skilled employees as the previous paragraph highlighted, organizations must take matters into their own hands to ensure their staff is trained as much and as feasible as possible. Establishing policy and training to cover the basics would be a huge asset to every organization. Until supply meets demand, hospitals and medical companies must be doing everything in their power to ensure their employees know how to protect valuable information.

References:

Conn, J. (2015). Healthcare struggles to recruit top cybersecurity pros. Retrieved from: http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20151024/MAGAZINE/310249962

Morgan, S. (2016). One Million Cybersecurity Job Openings In 2016. Retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevemorgan/2016/01/02/one-million-cybersecurity-job-openings-in-2016/#277bf10d27ea

Snell, E. (2017). Addressing the Cybersecurity Skills Gap with Improved Training. Retrieved from: http://healthitsecurity.com/news/addressing-the-cybersecurity-skills-gap-with-improved-training