Globally, cybersecurity threats continue to accelerate in pace and scale with rising malware and deepfake attacks. Over a third of organizations worldwide suffered a material cyber incident from malicious actors in the past year, while 73% were affected by ransomware attacks in 2023. With these cyberattacks come serious financial costs — global damages total an astonishing $8 trillion each year. As attack surfaces continue to expand and cybercrime emerges as the world’s third-largest economy, trailing only the US and China, the time to act is now.

Cybersecurity professionals are key to addressing this problem. Yet, the global cybersecurity skills deficit has reached a record high of 4 million. In the UAE alone, a recent study finds that 66% of IT managers believe their organizations lack “the right people and processes to be cyber resilient.” So why is there a growing disparity between the demand for cyber staff and the availability within the talent pool, and how can we tackle this?