Delivering free and globally accessible cybersecurity training

The World Economic Forum Centre for Cybersecurity has launched a set of initiatives to reduce the global cybersecurity workforce gap through training and upskilling.

Salesforce, Fortinet and the Global Cyber Alliance, in partnership with the Centre, are delivering free and globally accessible cybersecurity training through the Cybersecurity Learning Hub. This platform is democratizing access to cybersecurity career paths and has already trained over 122,000 individuals spread across all continents.

Digitalization, in tandem with the economic impact of COVID-19, has created a “double-disruption” scenario for workers. In 2020, the World Economic Forum Future of jobs report suggested that 50% of all employees will need reskilling by 2025, with 40% of workers’ core skills expected to change in the same period.

Cybersecurity is one of the most relevant areas to concentrate reskilling efforts. The move to work-from-home due to the pandemic underlined the importance of cybersecurity to ensuring the smooth running of an economy, facilitating everything from food deliveries to manufacturing processes as well as the functioning of critical infrastructure such as electricity grids and the banking system.

Additionally, there is a clear need for more cybersecurity professionals. Cybersecurity Ventures estimates that the number of unfilled cybersecurity jobs grew by 350% since 2013 and that the professional shortfall will be 3.5 millions by 2025 in the United States alone.

The Cybersecurity Learning Hub has revealed a clear global appetite for access to cybersecurity training, with over 480,000 completions of its learning modules recorded since it was first launched in 2019.

The professional training modules are developed by Forum’s Partners and the Centre for Cybersecurity. Some of the most popular modules include Cyber Resilience, Cyber Hygiene and Application Security. This highlights how individuals are prioritizing how to prevent and prepare for a cyberattack and how to build secure applications that can help them do business in a secure way. The user data displays the importance of practical skills and the value created by pooling the cybersecurity expertise of Forum partners.

Additionally, concentrating on cybersecurity training creates opportunities to tackle inequality. World Economic Forum partner ABSA, in collaboration with the Maharishi Institute, have been running successful cybersecurity academies that are targeting some of the most disadvantaged groups in South Africa. This approach is scalable and shows it can reliably bring people into permanent, high-skilled work.

As cybercrime spreads across sectors and borders, cybersecurity is proving more and more critical to the survival of businesses, organizations and countries. The Forum’s Centre for Cybersecurity keeps working with its partners to allow employees and individuals to advance their skills through cybersecurity training.

By partnering with the Forum, organizations can join the Centre’s initiatives to address the cybersecurity skills gap, build resilience in industries and secure new technologies.