Tune in to Dark Reading Radio on Wednesday, Oct. 19 at 1pmET, when we'll discuss what specific efforts in industry, academia, and government, are under way to fill the cybersecurity skills gap.

If there was ever a tipping point in information security's well-known and maligned skills gap, it would be right about now.

There are some 200,000 unfilled cybersecurity jobs in the US and around 1 million worldwide. Demand for people to fill those jobs will increase 53% by 2018, and there aren't enough people with the skills to fill the current positions, much less the future ones.

At the same time, Russia is flexing its cyberattack prowess against US political interests with the alleged hacking of voter registration databases as well as of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and then dumping allegedly stolen data online via WikiLeaks. Cybercrime continues to rise, and mega data breaches affecting millions of people continue to occur, such as Yahoo and the Office of Personnel Management.

Yet there still isn't a clear path to a career in security. So what now?

There's actually hope on the horizon. A wave of programs aimed at boosting training, education, and exposure to cybersecurity have cropped up. But it's not clear just how quickly these newly launched programs will be able to pump out new cybersecurity-ready job candidates.

Join me for the next episode of Dark Reading Radio on Wednesday, October 19 at 1pmET/4pmPT, "The Cyber Skills Shortage," when I'll host guests Carson Sweet, co-founder and CTO of CloudPassage, which published an eye-popping study of the security gap in top US undergraduate computer science programs, and Rodney Petersen, head of NIST's new National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE). NICE is a government, academia, and industry effort that provides grant money to security education, training, and workforce development.

We'll look at what's actually being done to get job candidates the proper education and training they need to join the security industry. After our panel discussion, we will hold a 30-minute live online chat where you can submit your own questions to Sweet and Peterson. (If you're not registered for the site, you can do so here).

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About the Author(s)

Kelly Jackson Higgins, Editor-in-Chief, Dark Reading

Kelly Jackson Higgins is the Editor-in-Chief of Dark Reading. She is an award-winning veteran technology and business journalist with more than two decades of experience in reporting and editing for various publications, including Network Computing, Secure Enterprise Magazine, Virginia Business magazine, and other major media properties. Jackson Higgins was recently selected as one of the Top 10 Cybersecurity Journalists in the US, and named as one of Folio's 2019 Top Women in Media. She began her career as a sports writer in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, and earned her BA at William & Mary. Follow her on Twitter @kjhiggins.

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