Wanted: Cyber Warriors

For recent college grads that have had difficulty getting their footing in the job market, you may want to head back to school to study cybersecurity. According to this article by Alexander Fitzpatrick in The Washington Post yesterday “not enough digital experts are entering the cybersecurity field to meet the ever-growing demand.”

“The government needs to hire at least 10,000 experts in the near future and the private sector needs four times that number, according to Tom Kellermann, vice president at Trend Micro and former member of President Obama’s cybersecurity commission. Booz Allen Hamilton, a private security firm in McLean, has hired nearly 3,000 cybersecurity experts in the past two years, and that trend is expected to continue.”

In The Washington Post today, Ellen Nakishima reports that DARPA, the folks that brought you the Internet, has launched a five year $110 million effort dubbed Project X  “to develop technologies to improve its cyberwarfare capabilities, launch effective attacks and withstand the likely retaliation.”

DARPA is tapping into the “private sector, universities and even computer-game companies“ to assist in the effort.

It just might be time to reconsider that degree in Art History.