Fed IT Security Workforce to Double?
Survey Projects Workforce Expansion by 2015"Technology keeps coming new at us every month," says Hord Tipton, executive director at (ISC)2, a not-for-profit IT security education and certification organization. And people with the right skills will be needed to protect critical infrastructure and systems, Tipton says.
The 2011 Global Information Security Workforce Study, conducted by (ISC)2 and Frost & Sullivan, polled more than 10,000 respondents from companies and public sector organizations worldwide, including 145 C-level U.S. government officials comprising of 62 percent chief information security officers, 21 percent chief information officers, and other C-level officers, all representing a cross section of mid-to-large size organizations. (For an analysis of this projected federal workforce expansion, read: Real Story Behind Fed IT Security Job Growth)
The survey shows that government officials share very similar concerns as other organizations, with the top three challenges being application vulnerabilities (73 percent), mobile devices (66 percent) and viruses and worm attacks (64 percent). Also, 90 percent of federal respondents believe that the exposure of confidential or sensitive information, data loss or leaks is by far the greatest concern about moving to a private cloud.
The survey also indicates that over 50 percent of U.S. federal government respondents list social media tools such as content filtering, website blocking and social media policy as very or somewhat important, illustrating the increased prevalence and significance of social media within the government.
This shows us that the federal sector is not behind in embracing emerging technologies, Tipton says. "It's now only a matter of getting intelligent with what choices to make and why."