The fastest growing and most highly recruited jobs in the country aren’t coming from where you may think. No, it’s not in the circus (you may have missed the boat on that), they are in the field of cybersecurity, a program that Bucks now offers as part of its IT Academy.
There is an alarming need in this country for people with skills and experience to do the jobs that keep us, our families, and our country safe. To meet this growing demand, Bucks has introduced a cybersecurity training program. Students who successfully complete five courses designed to focus on a specific skill set can earn a Certificate in Information Assurance.
“With anything in technology, it’s changing every eighteen months, so if you’re not keeping pace with what’s changing, you will be left behind,” said Owen Forrest, Director of the IT Academy, “it’s all designed to be current, provide the latest training and the latest technologies, and meet the current needs of the marketplace.”
Currently, the marketplace needs talent. Target was the victim of possibly the biggest retail hack in history, just days before Thanksgiving in 2013, when someone installed malware in their security and payment system that was designed to steal every credit card from every Target location. Sony Pictures was hacked in 2014 when a group calling themselves the “Guardians of Peace” demanded the film “The Interview” be pulled from theaters.
These are only the larger, more elaborate hacks that we hear about, but recent findings suggest that data breaches are occurring at an alarming rate. A study from the Ponemon Institute found that 43% of companies experienced some type of data breach in 2014, a number that was up 10% from the year before.
“35% of jobs in cybersecurity are going unfilled today,” said Matt Frederickson, an instructor for the cybersecurity program at Bucks, “cybersecurity is just not something people think about, they don’t think about protecting their data. If a hacker were able to get into the school’s data base – they have full names and addresses – that information could get, for a person over 30, five dollars a name on the dark web, for someone under the age of 18, you could get 20-25 dollars.”
The reality of the new age of information is that we are willing and eager to share both our most intimate and mundane moments in life on the internet, but we must also be aware of how this information can be used against us, and to that end, who exactly will be protecting us if there is such a wide talent gap?
According to Forbes, there are over 1 million cybersecurity jobs available right now with projections showing a rise to almost 1.5 million by the year 2020, and they exist in a wide range of areas from the private sector, like consulting firms and law firms, to the public sector, like the Department of Homeland Security, NSA, and FBI.
The need is clear and pressing for young, smart, and talented individuals to fill these jobs. “If someone wanted a degree in information technology, and they take the certification exams and left here with their associates degree, they would have no problem finding a job, in fact, people would probably be calling them before they finished their degree.”
Students interested in the cybersecurity program should visit the IT Academy section of Bucks.edu or speak to Owen Forrest at Gateway room 118.