30,000 New CyberSecurity Jobs

There is an ad in today's Washington Post from University of Maryland University College for a BS or MS in CyberSecurity.  UMUC offers both CyberSecurity and CyberSecurity Policy BS and MS degrees.  The ad points out that there will be an estimated 30,000 new jobs in CyberSecurity which I easily believe.

I don't have a clue if this is a quality curriculum or not.  What I do know is that this is sorely needed in the computer industry.  When we have our first major cyber security attack that affects the United States or any other country in a significant fashion, then we will see these CyberSecurity job numbers jump.   This is not something that you take your typical sysadmin and ask them to "worry about security a little more".  I know that many non computer industry individuals were lulled to sleep when we did not see some of the predicted Y2K meltdowns never happened.

I would imagine that some of the nearby government security agencies (hopefully) had a great deal of input to UMUC's new CyberSecurity Programs.   This is where government and industry do need to work together as well as working with other countries.

Federal Times reported on Friday:

The Obama administration plan, to some extent, builds on the Bush administration's Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI). Among items of interest to the federal workforce, a 12-point CNCI summary calls for:

• Continuation of the Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) initiative, meant to reduce the number of connections between government computers and the Internet.

• Deployment of an intrusion detection system of sensors across the government.

• Coordination of research and development across government.

• Development of a pipeline of skilled cybersecurity employees.

• Coordination and cooperation with the private sector to address security matters of common interest.

That last item, public-private cooperation, has drawn considerable attention. There's wide agreement that the expertise of the private sector ought to be aligned with the security needs of government.

"To secure our country from cyber attacks, we must have shared responsibility between the government and the private sector," Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., told the Business Software Alliance Cybersecurity Forum in April.

At the same time, some in the private sector warn that industry may not be ready to work with government and vice versa.

"There has been no effort in terms of ironing out the legalities," said Pat Clawson, CEO of security and vulnerability technologies firm Lumension.

It will be interesting to see what other universities and colleges will follow the CyberSecurity path in the CS curriculums.