Cloud migration and the cyber skills shortage

Protecting applications off prem demands a fresh wave of security talent

Sponsored Post Shifting workloads and applications to the cloud is on every forward-thinking CIO's wish list. It is also their worst nightmare. If they get it right, they've helped to transform and modernize their organization's operations and everyone's happy. If they get it wrong, it's a different story, made much worse if a seriously expensive data breach is involved.

The cloud first popped up on the IT agenda over a decade ago, yet fears around regulatory compliance, governance and cybersecurity still linger. CIOs continue to worry that moving highly sensitive business information onto private or public cloud platforms will expose their organizations to increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. If things go awry they've put the whole organization on the chopping block. No pressure then.

So if protecting cloud-based infrastructure, applications and data is a matter of existential survival, the first thing you need is people that know what they're talking about. Which is a problem, because professionals with cloud security skills have never been so hard to find.

Help is at hand in the form of SANS Institute. The deep training resources provided can help organizations quickly develop the talent they need in-house. SANS training and GIAC certification, along with research and community initiatives, are designed to nurture a new generation of qualified staff whose job is to protect those precious applications and data sets sitting in the cloud.

As with other SANS courses, the emphasis is on practicality and making sure that freshly trained personnel can put their new knowledge to use on their first day back in the office. The sessions offer an intensive and immersive experience involving the industry's top engineers, architects, administrators, developers and information security professionals.

There are courses for DevOps professionals, as well as cloud security analysts, engineers, architects and managers. Baseline and foundational courses will give you the grounding you need to establish your career. Core courses will take you to the next stage in a variety of disciplines, with further modules for particular specialisms, and also for those at management level.

It doesn't matter what stage you are at in your cybersecurity career - a relative novice or a seasoned pro - the SANS Cloud Security Flight Plan is designed to help your career progression take wing and fly high.

For more detailed information about how SANS cloud security training can map to your job role, click here.

Sponsored by SANS.