From an interesting New Yorker piece by Sue Halpern:

There are currently more than three hundred thousand unfilled cybersecurity jobs in both government and the private sector in the United States alone. Worldwide, the number is expected to be three and a half million by 2021; that year, cybercrime is expected to cost six trillion dollars. Even the United States military is at risk, according to last year’s Defense Department Inspector General report, which found that insecure systems left the country susceptible to missile attacks. This year’s cybersecurity-readiness review of the Navy found that “competitors and potential adversaries have exploited [Department of the Navy] information systems, penetrated its defenses, and stolen massive amounts of national security” intellectual property. And, of course, as we now know, our elections, the essential engine of our democracy, are also poorly defended. “I don’t think any of us are questioning the fact that there is a lack of cybersecurity professionals across the board, in all different types of professions,” Emmel said.

Halpern’s piece was sparked by the fact that, this summer,

the N.S.A. is running a hundred and twenty-two cybersecurity camps across the country. There are camps for girls in South Dakota, Maryland, Puerto Rico, and South Carolina; a camp in Pennsylvania that simulates an airport hack; and one in Georgia that disarms a car hacking. On the last Monday in July, as news broke that a hundred million Capital One bank accounts had been breached, I attended Camp CryptoBot, at Pace University’s Westchester campus, the only cyber camp affiliated with the Navy. A few years ago, the camp director, Pauline Mosley, a professor of information technology, found herself sitting next to an admiral at a conference and used the opportunity to deploy her pre-digital networking skills.

GCHQ, are you listening?