The statistics are dismal. An estimated 3.5 million unfilled cyber positions by 2021 and today, we have over 300,000 openings in the U.S. alone. According to a New York Times article, “filling those jobs would mean increasing the country’s current cybersecurity workforce of 715,000 people by more than 40 percent,” according to data presented at the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education Conference. If you’re a student in cyber or are just undeclared, there hasn’t been a better time to consider cybersecurity as a professional career. The field has come a long way from the stereotypical hoodie-wearing, Mountain Dew sipping worker in a dark room performing tedious coding tasks.
Cybersecurity is so much more than that—and it’s exciting! Don’t believe us? At Divergence Academy, we are preparing the next generation of cyber professionals to enter the workforce and alleviate the skills gap through gamified learning. If more institutions adopted such an approach, we as educators would be more successful at not just engaging our students in teaching relevant concepts and theory, but successful at helping them build skills needed in today’s workforce.
Cyber Teaching and Learning Challenges
But before we get into the “hopeful” part of this article, we need to understand the challenges in teaching cyber in the first place. The way that cybersecurity has been taught throughout the years often include lectures, PowerPoint presentations or online models that students complete on their own. Inherently there is nothing wrong in teaching new information in this way. However, the opportunity exists to help students learn how to apply this knowledge to a real-world setting. The act of doing and creating the needed experience is the single most important quality job candidates can bring to an employer and this is the gap Divergence Academy is hoping to close.
When students sit in a classroom, information can be presented in a systematic way, where in real life this may not always be the case, especially in the world of cybersecurity.
When you think of teaching someone how to think like a hacker, you are fundamentally teaching them how to be creative in how they approach a situation.
The concept of teaching someone to think like a hacker is easier said than done, which is why diversifying the way students can process information is crucial. Not every student learns in the way same.
There’s Hope for Cybersecurity: Continuous Skills Acquisition and Application
As cyber educators and instructors, we know there is no “one-way” to teach and that’s the good news! While certifications and technical degrees are a starting place for cybersecurity readiness and workforce development, instructors must think of new methods that provide persistent access to cyber education.
This statement can best be described with an analogous story. If an aspiring baseball player was training for the major leagues and went to practice to hone his/her skills, they would certainly learn something. However, if that aspiring baseball player then applied for the major leagues a year or so later, without attending training leading up to that point, he/she would be a little rusty, wouldn’t you say? The same situation can be applied to cybersecurity. You wouldn’t attend a class or even complete a full degree in cybersecurity and then apply for a job and say you were a “seasoned cybersecurity professional,” would you? Of course not. There is no “final inning” in cybersecurity signaling a professional’s peak of learning and skills acquisition.
Threats evolved day by day and if a student graduates thinking about phishing or malware detection one way and ends up in a work environment where that knowledge isn’t applicable anymore, we won’t be able to help the next generation of cyber pros be successful in their jobs. To keep current students and alumni actively engaged in critical learning, persistent access to cybersecurity training must be employed. In this industry, the only constant in cybersecurity is change, and for that reason (in addition to the multitude of attacks businesses every day), educational institutions can be vigilant in putting learning to work for the businesses and workplaces we rely on to support our daily functions.
As technology and interconnectivity evolve with each passing day, steps must be taken immediately to adopt a pedagogy that values and emphasizes continuous learning to best prepare our students for the career they want. With gamified learning at the helm of a new teaching approach for cybersecurity, we can be on our way to minimizing the cyber skills gap and empowering today’s students in a more effective way.
For more information about our gamified learning cyber courses, visit https://divergenceacademy.com/.
