New skills programme aims to help young people into IT security career

Certification body Crest and IT sector skills council e-Skills UK have launched a new professional placement programme to help encourage more young people to start a career in IT security.

The initiative, aims to address the skills gap in information security by supporting high quality young people into the information assurance industry, part of an ongoing commitment to establish more structured training and development.

"No one would argue that we need to attract more good people into information assurance," said Ian Glover, president of Crest (The Council for Registered Ethical Security Testers).
Failing to encourage enough school and university leavers into the market will create a greater skills gap problem for the future, he says.

"Given the changes in the UK workforce we will be competing with all other engineering disciplines and must position the information security industry as being a career of choice," said Glover.

The placement initiative aims to encourage and train more people in information security, and create greater awareness of penetration testing and network forensics to improve the current and future skills problem.

Through the e-Skills Professional Placement programme, companies can offer positions to people in further education to work for 3, 9 and 15 months.  

"From now until the Spring is the best time for employers to start advertising their placement opportunities and e-Skills UK is helping to manage the process by liaising with employers, universities and students," said Glover.

The Professional Placement programme is designed to address the lack of companies willing to invest in new graduates with no experience.

"If we can encourage the brightest young people into our industry and show that there are companies willing to support them during their early careers, I am confident we can increase the take up of information assurance as a profession," said Janet Richards, director in higher education programmes at e-Skills UK.

Crest is encouraging member companies to take part and benefit from being able to assess potential employees over an extended period, as well as increase their profile among universities and graduates.