Addressing Skills Shortage and Gap Through Higher Education

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Publication date:November 24, 2021

In this report, ENISA contributes to both practice and research on the cybersecurity skills shortage and gap in two distinctive areas. Firstly, it provides an overview of the current supply of cybersecurity skills in Europe through an analysis of data gathered and generated by the recently established Cybersecurity Higher Education Database (CyberHEAD). Secondly, it describes the policy approaches adopted by EU Member States in their quest to increase and sustain their national cybersecurity workforces. These approaches have been classified and analysed based on objectives defined by ENISA’s National Capabilities Assessment Framework (NCAF), namely cybersecurity awareness, training, challenges and exercises. Based on the data collected and analysed, this report makes five recommendations to address the EU cybersecurity skills shortage and gap.

In this report, ENISA contributes to both practice and research on the cybersecurity skills shortage and gap in two distinctive areas. Firstly, it provides an overview of the current supply of cybersecurity skills in Europe through an analysis of data gathered and generated by the recently established Cybersecurity Higher Education Database (CyberHEAD). Secondly, it describes the policy approaches adopted by EU Member States in their quest to increase and sustain their national cybersecurity workforces. These approaches have been classified and analysed based on objectives defined by ENISA’s National Capabilities Assessment Framework (NCAF), namely cybersecurity awareness, training, challenges and exercises. Based on the data collected and analysed, this report makes five recommendations to address the EU cybersecurity skills shortage and gap.