A secure opportunity for Ireland

According to a recent report in 2022, there is an opportunity to position Ireland as a global leader in cybersecurity and create over 17,000 jobs by 2030 in the process. What does the country need to do to make this happen — and is it even possible?

The growth of cybersecurity

When Colm Murphy, senior cybersecurity adviser in Huawei’s global cybersecurity transparency centre, entered the industry in the mid-1990s as a young graduate, cybersecurity was very much a hard sell. “The digital agenda was in its infancy so understandably only a handful of companies in a couple of industries paid it any attention. That is certainly no longer the case.

“Today, nearly every government anywhere in the world is pinning a considerable part of their country’s future GDP growth on digital transformation. Digital transformation is across all industries, whether automotive, manufacturing, healthcare, finance, education or government. You name a sector and they are actively investing in digital technologies that will drive their organisations forward. We see network infrastructures and digital services growing and improving every day and a booming digital economy.”

While we see these new possibilities in the digital world, we also see that it brings challenges in cybersecurity and privacy protection, says Murphy. “Cybersecurity goes hand-in-hand with digital transformation. As more devices get connected, devices that are increasingly sophisticated and intelligent, what we are seeing is an ever-expanding potential attack surface. There are simply more networks and devices and applications and components to secure. Couple this with the fact that governments are paying greater attention to cybersecurity and have adopted laws and regulations to strengthen the governance of cyberspace.

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“We now have a global regulatory landscape that is demanding that businesses must begin to take care of cybersecurity and that there will be very real consequences where they don’t.”

Gaining global traction

Ireland is already well on its way to becoming a global leader in cybersecurity and has a strong foundational base on which to build, says Murphy. “To get ahead, it is important that industry, academia and government work together to push forward any imitative that can help ensure a steady flow of skilled people into the industry in future years. Any region anywhere in the world that can demonstrate a strong availability of skilled cybersecurity expertise stands the best chance of attracting investment in this area.”

Approximately five million people work in cybersecurity today globally but there remains a global cybersecurity skills shortage that is well documented, says Murphy, who believes the prediction of 17,000 jobs is a very reasonable target. “Ireland already has a vibrant and mature ecosystem to leverage. The work underway in Cyber Ireland is a great starting point for exploring this ecosystem. So Ireland is indeed well placed to capitalise on the growth of the industry and has in place various structures and supports for many years.

“But we mustn’t underestimate the skills gap issue. There is little point in having job opportunities if we don’t have the people to do the work. Irish universities have a key role to play and are making strong progress. Many institutions now offer cybersecurity undergraduate and/or graduate programmes and have done so for many years. They also have developed deep and lasting partnerships with private industry and consequently, Irish cybersecurity graduates are in high demand.”

Murphy says that while all of the foundational ingredients for success in Ireland are in place, the biggest threat to success is the skills gap. “By working together, industry, academia, and government, we can build an environment that meets not only the challenges of today but also of tomorrow.”