Intelligent CIO APAC Issue 36 | Page 83

FINAL WORD they provide a foundational control for organisations to be cyber resilient .
According to Verizon ’ s recently published 2023 Data Breach Investigation Report , stolen credentials are used in over 40 % of data breaches . Once attackers gain access to an organisation ’ s infrastructure , they can start finding ways to move laterally and escalate privileges to access critical data , erasing their traces to remain undetected in the system , often for months or years . While technology can help , organisations must also have appropriately skilled IT staff and educate all employees on the best cyber hygiene practices .
This is why we need to explore new ways not only to attract people into a career in cybersecurity but also to upskill and reskill the information technology and security professionals we already have . The old ways of developing talent are no longer good enough .
An obvious way to do this is through gamification .
Cybersecurity gamification , or hacking gamification , aims at improving people ’ s hands-on technical expertise and collaboration skills by incentivising them to solve security-related challenges through competitions and rewards .
The global workforce shortfall between the number of jobs and qualified personnel in cybersecurity passed 3.4 million people in 2022 and continues to grow annually . Despite hundreds of thousands of layoffs in Big Tech globally , the cybersecurity sector continues to have a huge swathe of job openings and , according to research by Per Capita , the number of unfilled positions in Australia is predicted to hit 30,000 by 2026 .
Hacking gamification puts employees in real-world scenarios and makes them think under pressure and evaluate their ability to respond .
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