Staff IT skills gap hinders security efforts, CompTIA reports

IT professionals are frequently ill-equipped to address the complex nature of security together with other IT issues, despite large enterprises rating cybersecurity among their top priorities, in response to a brand new IT skills survey by CompTIA.

Some of the threats could be very sophisticated and should be beyond the reach of the overall IT worker.

Tim Herbert, vp of analysis, CompTIA

The “State of the IT Skills Gap” report surveyed 1,061 IT and business managers. Of these employed in a big organization, 92% reported cybersecurity as a top priority for his or her company. However, only 7% of all those surveyed said their company was exactly where they desired to be in terms of IT staff skills, that could severely limit their ability to satisfy their security needs.

“A lot of businesses should not have security specialists,” said Tim Herbert, vice chairman of research at CompTIA. Companies often place confidence in general IT staff that can't stay alongside of the evolution of security which includes all other IT fields.

“There is still a lag because technology moves very rapidly. A few of the threats might be very sophisticated and will be beyond the reach of the final IT worker,” he said.

Lack of educating resources was also credited with causing the IT skills gap by 43% of execs surveyed. Because of this, many organizations are counting on online self-training to maintain staff abreast of recent information.

And although greater than 1/2 respondents said they planned to handle the space by training or retraining staff in areas which are lacking, only 38% said they'd utilized in -person or classroom-based training internally.

Herbert cites an absence of monetary resources as one cause for the web training trend, but in addition the truth that online resources give the worker the versatility to be informed on their lonesome time, and the corporate the power to preserve in-office productivity. It might be nice if the total IT staff could take every week off and attend an IT seminar that might update all of them straight away, he said, but companies can't afford it.

They also can't afford to rent new employees in lots of cases. Only 28% of respondents cited new hires that allows you to close the gaps. There's always concern about not just the hard knowledge base of new employees, however the soft skills they possess to boot, Herbert said.

“Hiring someone new still involves a learning curve,” he said. “Soft skills are still important. New employees should be capable of work in a team and learn customer service” among other skills.

Another top priority among two-thirds of companies is mobility, that's more nascent than security. There's now more demand for flexibility among end users, who are not looking for to be limited to using a BlackBerry or other standardized devices.

“Because it has happened so quickly, many organizations and their IT staff are still catching up to know the technology and ensure they strike the correct balance between protecting the technology and giving flexibility for devices for use,” Herbert said.

Because bring-your-own-device BYOD is one of these new model, businesses are having trouble maintaining with emerging security concerns at the mobile platform to boot, consistent with Hebert.

“From the safety standpoint, there are increasing concerns about mobile malware and information loss. There should not that many companies yet which have full-blown mobile device management (MDM) applications and processes in place,” Herbert said, citing tools like remote wiping as a technique to offer protection to corporate info on any device.

However, in keeping with another recent CompTIA survey, only 25% of IT departments use online tracking or swiping, and 40% encrypt the info on mobile devices. Requiring passcodes, which seems the least secure option, was the highest choice for 75% of these polled. The “Trends in Enterprise Mobility” report also noted that one-third of the five hundred IT and business professionals surveyed had begun developing an overarching mobile security policy.

The one sure thing concerning the IT skills gap, especially for security, is that it hasn't ever been more important or pervasive than it can be today, Herbert said. Technology is now more concerned about the workplace than ever, he said.

“It is filtered right down to all employees and all sizes of businesses,” he said. “It used not to be accessible since it was too complex or too expensive. But now we do see more technology being utilized by more employees than ever before.” Consequently, he continued, “general literacy and competency of all staff is becoming increasingly important.”

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