IT Bosses Search for Security Skills
The importance of high quality security skills has been highlighted in a new survey commissioned by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA). Security tops the list of the technology skills that are most important to organizations today, but the survey also reveals that there is a significant gap between the skills that are required and those that are actually available.
More than 3,500 technology professionals were surveyed in North America, Europe and Asia. Of the respondents in nine countries with established IT industries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States), 73% identified security, firewalls and data privacy as the IT skills most important to their organization today. But worryingly just 57% said their IT employees are proficient in these security skills.
There is a similar gap in five countries where the emergence of a strong IT industry is relatively recent (China, India, Poland, Russia and South Africa). Among respondents in these countries, 76% identified security as the top skill their organization needed, whilst again only 57% said their current staff were proficient in security.
However, concerns over the lack of security skills might be short-lived, as around 55% of respondents said that they expected mobile, wireless and RFID skills to become more important than all others within five years.