Kevin Hanes, who was just named to lead online cybersecurity training startup Cybrary, is no stranger to the challenge of securing strong cyber talent — or any cyber talent, really — which is part of the reason he became interested in the job in the first place.
Hanes will succeed former CEO and co-founder Ryan Corey, who will continue to serve on Cybrary’s board and as adviser to the CEO, according to a Wednesday announcement.
A breakdown in staffing-up
Coming from Atlanta cybersecurity company SecureWorks Corp. (NASDAQ: SCWX), where he served as chief operating officer for almost a decade, Hanes said the draw of coming to Cybrary was its ability to help build and sustain a talent pipeline to fill cyber positions through the company’s education platform for cybersecurity and information technology management roles.
“I was fighting adversaries at scale for the last eight years, and I know really deeply, firsthand, what it’s like to have to try and get this talent, try to find it, try to retain it, try to up-level skill,” he said. “I felt like this was an opportunity to come make a difference in the world.”
Demand for those services won’t be a problem. The 2020 (ISC)² Cybersecurity Workforce Study estimated a global shortage in skilled cyber talent of about 3.1 million unfilled roles, while in the U.S., that shortage is hovering around 359,000 roles.
But what’s intriguing about those numbers is that they are actually down from 2019, when the study projected a talent shortfall of 4 million jobs and around 498,000 unfilled roles in the U.S.
That decline hasn’t been fueled by a sudden surge in talent, but rather softer investment by companies in trying to recruit that talent and, in some cases, a stronger focus on retaining current employees, the report found.
Increased attention to cyber likely to create more demand
Those dynamics are likely to change this year, when companies are positioning for a possible return to hiring as the economy recovers from the pandemic and high profile cyber and ransomware attacks drive awareness of the importance of strong cybersecurity.
Hanes said there is still a challenge to find the talent to meet the need in a highly competitive market, where companies are just as likely to identify workers from their own ranks that can be converted into cyber professionals through what’s known as re-skilling or up-skilling.
“You put requisitions out there and you find out that you are not getting anybody. Three or four months have gone by and the people you are talking to, you can’t get them,” he said. “Ultimately, you kind of decide, maybe six months later, maybe we better find some people that have skills; they don’t quite have the training and they aren’t cyber professionals yet, but maybe they have some of the prerequisite skills and internal drive to go do this. Then you start to say, how do we invest in them.”
That’s where Cybrary comes in. The company offers skills courses in cybersecurity, IT and cloud management, data science and others. And growth has never been a problem. Cybrary now has more than 3 million users on its platform and has raised $23 million from investors since its founding in 2015.
Not just new hires, but professional development
The company finally set up shop in its 28,000-square-foot facility in College Park's Discovery District last month, and from there, the company is looking to channel its growth at a faster rate, Hanes said. That includes not just getting cyber talent in the door, but being the platform that helps grow their careers once they're in.
“For me, it’s to accelerate the mission that’s here,” he said. “Doing that by accelerating our pace of innovation, by keeping us extremely focused in the cybersecurity area and giving the team the resources we need to grow and thrive.”
That includes Cybrary’s professional development curriculum, which allows users to map out their career paths and select education modules to help them advance. Hanes said he sees that tool as being a growth driver.
“My sense though and my coming-in position is we need to go deeper in cyber,” he said. “It’s so many unfilled jobs and a lot of times, those jobs may be looking for entry, people who can come in at the entry level and fill those roles. Beyond that, I think there’s an opportunity to keep people advancing.”
But Cybrary's growth will also depend on its services keeping pace with the rate of technology change to match ever-evolving cyberthreats — and on the company embracing customers whose cyber needs are critical to mission, such as the federal government, Hanes said.
Hanes didn’t name specific agencies, but said that the company is working with government officials, and that recent policy developments like the Biden administration’s cybersecurity executive order are likely to further drive Cybrary’s business.
“It brings needed attention and those things are, I believe, necessary building blocks,” he said. “What I see is that its going to create more of a problem in terms of staffing. So that then will have this ripple effect. I think the commercial space will follow that. I think it will just amplify our purpose and what we’re here to help solve.”
