A recent report by the Center for Cyber Safety and Education showed unfilled cyber security jobs are expected to reach 1.8 million by 2022.

It is no secret that the cyber security skills gap has hindered organisations’ security protocols and scope tremendously over the last few years.

Local, national and global businesses need security teams and they, in turn, need resources. Increasingly more complex cyber attacks have been driving up the demand for qualified professionals to help defend businesses. And a shift towards DevOps – organisations releasing software at a daily rate – is only compounding this further.

Educating people to the standard of cyber security proficiency we need right now would be a long, arduous and expensive task. And we need 1.8 million of them in less than 3 years!

Adding to this, less than 6% of cyber security practitioners have learned hacking skills in a classroom. This showcases that educational processes, whilst having merit, may not be the solution when it comes to securing sensitive data.

It’s clear the industry has to look at this problem from a new perspective. There isn’t enough resource (people, time, money) to address the growing problem.

The answer to the skills gap?

A practical way to solve the cyber security skills gap involves automating software security tools in a centralised platform. By combing multiple tools, you can cover a wider security scope and continually monitor your software security during the software development lifecycle (SDLC).

This solution offers, not only more secure software at greater pace, but puts security at the start of the SDLC, and forces security strategy to be proactive.  

Automating means better communication between teams when prioritising issues, and allows metrics and trends to be captured over time – they’re more effective and efficient. And, automation also means no more personnel need to be added to a software security team.

This solution is, simply, a way to automate and orchestrate an area of software and application security that is obviously struggling to cope with the frequency of breaches and the demand for software.

As an industry, we still should rally together to embrace emerging cyber security talent, creativity, and curiosity and push for more understanding of the importance of cyber security in stopping sensitive data breaches. But cyber security needs to find an innovative technique that can safeguard customers on a global scale. Automation and orchestration of security testing tools point towards that all-encompassing security.