The figure is taken up by all the specialists in the sector. The PWC firm speaks of a global shortage of cybersecurity engineers that could rise to 3.5 million in 2021. Guillaume Vassault-Houlières, the boss of YesWeHack, a Rouen champion in the sector, who spoke during the evening It’s my job in Rouen on Tuesday February 22, spoke for his part of four million missing specialists. A figure that the whole profession takes up in unison. the New York Times, for its part, estimates that while the unemployment rate among tech workers is 1.7%, it is only 0.2% for those with cybersecurity expertise. For its part, the Association for the employment of executives, Apec, has ranked them at the top of the trades which it calls “formula 1”, those which have increased the most compared to the period before the crisis.
This shortage is due to the fact that companies have digitized at full speed, during the health crisis in particular, and that cyberattacks have never been so numerous. And because we don’t train enough specialists. Each year, there are a few hundred students who graduate from professional degrees and masters, when thousands are needed.
The National Information Systems Security Agency (Anssi) estimates that only 25% of recruitment needs are covered. And on the business side, we are worried: 88% of them believe that their computer system is not secure enough.
One cyber campus has just been inaugurated at La Défense. It is a 26,000 square meter tower, it must become the flagship of French cybersecurity. There you will find training organizations, state services, such as Anssi, gendarmerie and police, but also start-ups.
The objective is to launch ten per year and yet the candidates shun these formations. The cybersecurity professions suffer from a bad image and above all they are far too little feminized. For some experts, the future cannot be based on initial training alone, but on the retraining of employees towards these very technical professions.