The Increasing UK Cyber Skills Gap

by SecurityExpert on October 15, 2019

As organisations throughout the UK embrace Cyber Security Awareness Month, Intelligencia Training looks at why businesses are continuing to battle an increasing cyber skills gap.

Following an audit in 2018, the UK government recently announced plans to conduct its second audit into the state of the country’s cyber security workforce. The initial audit published last year found that more than half of UK businesses had a “basic technical cyber security skills gap”.

These findings didn’t come as a surprise, as Intelligencia, whose qualifications consist of the UK’s highest levels of vocational training available in intelligence and the only cyber security awareness programme with an official UK Government regulated qualification attached, explain that many organisations are overlooking the key weakness in their security infrastructure; their staff.

With IT infrastructure becoming more robust and cyber threats from social engineering and spear phishing increasing, cyber security should be just as much the responsibility of the wider workforce, as it is those in IT and network security. Even more so when you consider that over 90% of successful cyber breaches are facilitated by human error and a lack of general cyber security awareness.

One report found that between April and June 2019, UK businesses faced an average of 146,000 attempted cyber-attacks.

So how do we counter the threat?

Intelligencia highlight that social engineering and phishing are responsible for over 85% of human error breaches and that businesses need to educate the wider workforce – the prime target for cyber criminals – to identify and prevent such attacks.

The specialist training provider further explains that while some have taken action on increasing cyber security awareness, the assessments and training used are commonly ineffective.

Many organisations fail to recognise the true sophistication of professional attacks and monitor awareness levels through generic assessments, such as mass phishing tests based on click-rate, and limit training to more traditional programmes, which often become outdated the moment a learner completes the course.

Learning and development shouldn’t end on course completion and providing staff with a sustainable solution to cyber security awareness in an ever-evolving landscape is key. New threats evolve daily and it is essential that awareness is sustained to minimise the risk of a breach.

About Intelligencia ‘Cyber Stars’ Training:Intelligencia Training are cyber security specialists that operate within both the public and private sectors. They continue to deliver the leading Cyber Stars Initiative to a wide-range of high profile organisations to support them in increasing cyber security resilience.

For further information on the Cyber Stars Initiative, visit www.intelligenciatraining.com/cyber-stars or contact [email protected].