Fulfilling the cybersecurity position in several industries, whether it is considered a Critical Infrastructure industry or else, has been a challenging effort. World Economic Forum reported that the total global cybersecurity workforce gap is around 3,120,000 (2021), with the Asia Pacific region as the highest region experiencing this workforce gap.

The Europe region has the lowest cybersecurity workforce gap, with around 168,000 gap, which means around 5.38% of the total global gap. Compare to the Asia Pacific which has around 65.54% of the total global gap, should be viewed as a concern for those who care about cybersecurity assurance within their country/industry/company. As to provide proper supply to catch up with this deficit is not an instantaneous task.

By analyzing the above data, and mapping it into our Industry 4.0 with the OT/ICS and IT convergence milestone, we should put more concern on how the global world will face this situation. As for the cybersecurity workforce, covering the IT environment still has a huge gap in fulfilling the right and capable people, and how we can deal with OT/ICS cybersecurity professionals to support us in this Industry 4.0 era.

It is predicted that within the next 5-10 years, we will still experience a cybersecurity workforce gap, in IT and also (especially) in OT/ICS. Since the rate of demand based on the industry needs is increasing rapidly while the rate of professionals to supply the workforce to the industry is not able to catch up.

The Critical Infrastructure industry, where the OT/ICS environment has become the backbone of business operations, requires the support of internal and external parties to ensure cybersecurity assurance within their environment. They need to think of the best and most affordable way to maintain the safety and security of business operations, covering IT and OT/ICS environment, despite the proper composition of the cybersecurity workforce is not readily available.

For the Critical Infrastructure industry, the more specific question will still be open,

“Where we can find OT/ICS Cybersecurity Professionals and how we can find them to fill the gap?”