I grew up as a hacker. I have been working with computers all my life and have been a cybersecurity professional for the better part of two decades. My time spent in the hacker communities of the 1990s along with my own successful career progression have etched a special place in my heart for the cybersecurity field.
I’ve watched as cybersecurity has gone from a relatively unknown field, where I often struggled to even explain what it was I did for a living, to now an almost ubiquitous presence in the mainstream lives of every person on the planet. It is no secret that cybersecurity has become one of the most talked about career fields in technology and maybe just in general society.
However, as technology continues to grow, innovate, and permeate our daily lives in so many ways, the need for cybersecurity professionals has skyrocketed. I have read many accounts in industry and mainstream media of this so-called skills gap that we have in cybersecurity. I’ve seen estimates of anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of unfilled jobs. Yet, as I spoke with people who were trying to get into this hot job market, I heard stories of the struggles they were encountering. A sort of dissonance exists between what the industry is saying and what job seekers are experiencing. So I set out to solve this issue.