Spain has a shortage of 70,000 cyber security professionals

They live in a situation constant alarm. They know for sure that they will be attacked and their obsession is to be able to respond with the greatest agility to minimize damage to what they are charged with protecting. They are responsible for the cyber security of companies or institutions — CISOs, which is an abbreviation in English — and when asked if they can guarantee zero risk, they firmly answer: no.

“This is constantly changing, everything is developing at breakneck speed and the bad guys are always ahead of the police and the good guys, just like in the real world. This is a long-distance race without an end,” he sums up David Gonzalez, a computer engineer who has this responsibility in the multinational company Coren from Ourense. “You have to live constantly adapting and reacting quickly. The only thing you can have is the sure guarantee that you have things more or less under control and, above all, how to recover when someone hits you,” adds Román Ramírez, jáquer and founder RootedCON, the largest security and technology congress in Spain.

Both participated in Conference on cyber security in Galicia which was held at the School of Computer Engineering on the Ourense campus in the co-organization of the Agency for Technological Modernization of Galicia (Amtega) and the professional association that gathers Galician computer engineers. The meeting discussed the present and the future of a profession that not only has full employment, but also a shortfall of around 70,000 professionals to cover the demand in Spain. Reason? “There is no shortage of talent. There are no salaries. The average salary here is 29,000 euros, and the most common is 31,000. There is a lot of external, international offer. This is a global world and you can’t compete by offering those wages,” says Ramírez.

This expert in detecting failures in security systems explains that the CISO he is not only a technical expert in computer matters. “He must know law, finance, psychology and, above all, pure risk and countermeasures to advise boards of directors. They will have to connect with government agencies, control geopolitics and cybercriminals, says this hacker who explained that this crime is in the hands of five mafias that cooperate with each other. And, in this sense, participants insisted on the need for greater cooperation to counter them, also in the “good guys” part.

Another issue discussed at this meeting was the future Artificial Intelligence. “The bad guys will use AI, and so will we,” said Román Rodríguez. “He is unstoppable. And I don’t see the possibility of going back to the world of paper and pencil,” added David González.