specialists in 'not commonplace' shocker
Hmm.
I can't shake the question of whether this is a sales drive - people who sell qualification x do a survey which finds that not enough people have qualification x. But they got a Minister to repeat it so it must be Absolute Truth.
At first glance I thought this was a specialist version of the mythical IT skills shortage but the first challenge looks more like it's heading into code-breaking than anything else so there's also the possibility that they are just short of people at Cheltenham and/or Vauxhall.
The survey on the challenge site is a bit predictable - turns out that trying to recruit experienced* and qualified* (*: for various frequently unreasonable interpretations thereof) people into specialist roles is a bit trickier than a quick rummage in the CV bin.
Do all these people really need a 'cybersecurity expert'? From what has been said it sounds more like they need people to do better code, and some more competent architects and sysadmins. And possibly less of the sponsored lunches.
Still waiting for compo registration to be acknowleged...