Despite advances in automation, millions of additional people are still needed…

An article review.

If you follow cybersecurity news you’d be forgiven if you thought that humans were rapidly becoming obsolete: everywhere you turn there are articles extolling the virtues of automation and artificial intelligence for staying on top of all the threats facing your networks. However, a new workforce study from ISC2 suggests organizations need more humans working in security…about four million more, actually.

The 2019 ISC2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study goes on to say 65 percent of polled organizations had a shortage of cybersecurity staff, with more than 75 percent going on to say finding skilled employees was a top concern. Making things harder were issues such as employee retention—“burnout” is a common issue in the field, and skilled employees can often easily find work elsewhere.

Despite advances in automation, organizations are finding that they still need humans—many humans—to analyze all the new data these automated systems can generate. Computers, while very good at collecting data, are still not excellent when it comes to analysis and “judgement calls.” What technology can do is help humans cut through the noise by calling attention to suspicious traffic, log entries and errors: things that deserve a second look.

Technology is absolutely improving, in both its ability to help people make decisions and its ability to take action without human intervention…but for now (and the foreseeable future) it seems the industry still needs people—and a lot of them—to keep things on track.

Original article by Kate Rogers writing for CNBC.