Tribe of Hackers Security Leaders

31Robert M. Lee

“A major problem for many is that most job opportunities are for senior analysts and not entry-level analysts.”

Twitter: @RobertMLee • Website: www.linkedin.com/in/robmichaellee

Robert M. Lee is the CEO and cofounder of the OT/ICS cybersecurity company Dragos, Inc. He is recognized as a pioneer in ICS incident response and threat intelligence and is also an educator as a SANS course author and senior instructor. Robert gained his start in the U.S. Air Force as a cyber warfare operations officer assigned to the National Security Agency, where he built a first-of-its-kind ICS threat discovery mission.

Do you believe there is a massive shortage of career cybersecurity professionals?

There is a shortage of cybersecurity professionals, but the numbers and problem are often exaggerated. Many of the numbers pull from open job listings at companies online where it is common to see job requirements that aren't obtainable (e.g., seven years of experience in technologies that are only four years old), aren't reasonable skills to be found together (e.g., professional engineer with a decade of incident response experience), and more commonly are not offered at market rates (e.g., senior analyst with seven-plus years of experience at $60,000 and a security clearance).

There is no simple answer to bridge the gap, but there are a variety of efforts that are ongoing in different ...