back to article Minister calls for more cyber security experts

The minister for security has said the government has to do something about a shortage of emerging cyber security professionals. Baroness Neville-Jones said the problem Britain faces is that it has "a talented, but small pool of highly skilled public and private sector cyber security individuals". Speaking at the Cyber …

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  1. SuperTim

    Nice....

    But i get the feeling that they aren't really going overboard with the prizes. "internships" are hardly a prize now are they?, thats like winning a job by correctly answering the questions at an interview. I want cold hard cash money....

    Still, i had a crack at it and it was very enjoyable. I doubt i was the first to get it so no prize for me but i feel i bit less stupid than i did this time yesterday.

    It's just a shame that the old lemon juice invisible ink doesn't work in cyberspace or else i would be an expert!

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    "YOU HAVE BEEN REPORTED TO THE CYBER-POLICE

    ..and the state police. You d'un goofed!"

    Great thoughts there, Baroness Neville-Jones. We should also have a cyber Prime Minister and a cyber army. Here's to a rosy cyber-future.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    protip

    If they want people who understand security then they need to start teaching *NIX administration in schools.

  4. Doctor_Wibble

    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...

    1. SuperTim

      The test cipher...

      Had a few types of decryption in it, which was quite refreshing. You need to be able to recognise and extract specific data types, do some decyphering using a mathmatical formula and also a bit of steganography in there to boot! They didn't just put a simple code up for people to guess. I wait to see what's next, even if it doesn't lead me to GCHQ.

      I don't see how it will help with the cyber security (other than to break it) so maybe they are after spies.....oooooh!

      1. Doctor_Wibble

        ooh no title

        My curiosity was prompted more by the 'skills shortage' thing than the decryption - cleanup and lockdown being more my field* - but I opened the envelope, as it were (good analogy from comments on the followup article), and figured that there was more to do, and would probably have got there eventually, but I decided to use the proper approach instead. This being to see if someone had posted up hints or a solution and use that. No point in duplicating effort!

        * also much tutting (free of charge) because this is only after people failed to do things properly in the first place

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