New York may be the world’s largest target for crooks, cybertheives, hackers, nation-states looking to damage the U.S. as well as script-kiddies leveraging off-the-shelf hacking tools. Sure, Mayor Giuliani may have cleaned our city up and subsequent mayors have even improved on keeping the crime rate down but a lot of this crime has just moved online.
Yet, even with this onslaught of illicit activity, the industry is projected to be over two-million people short of cyber professionals in the next few years.
Ouch!
NYU wants to help.
To help fill this skills gap, New York University's Tandon School of Engineering has launched the New York Cyber Fellows, an online master’s program for cybersecurity education that costs $15,000 — the least, the school said, of any cybersecurity master’s program in New York City.
Recently, U.S. News & World Report announced NYU Tandon School of Engineering’s online graduate program in Computer Information Technology tied for No. 2 in the nation and the best in the Northeast region.
Last year, we reported that the City is having trouble filling cybersecurity positions. We explained, 93 percent of security professionals recently claimed it’s more difficult to hire security staff today than it was two years ago.
Around the same time we reported The New York City Economic Development Corp. (NYEDC) has launched a new program to address the city’s urgent cybersecurity skills shortage.
The program, Cyber NYC, is a $30 million initiative to develop cybersecurity talent, fund research and support the growth of security-focused startups across the metropolitan area.
NYEDC is also in the process of constructing a dedicated facility to host the new program. This special cyber center will host the city’s first-ever cybersecurity startup accelerator as well as other amenities.
The city also plans to add technology partnerships to its Applied Learning Initiative, to encourage collaboration between academic institutions and businesses and to help digital entrepreneurs launch new products and services. Additionally, Cyber NYC will host a cyber boot camp.
This is a positive development for New York City, as the city — and the state — is currently getting ravaged by cybercrime. Last year, New York reported a loss of $106.23 million from cybercrime which was the second-highest in the country. And New York City is now the top target for ransomware in the world.
The good news is the government and universities are coming together to reduce the scope of the problem. It is too big for them to solve alone but at least there is effort being put in. It’s a good start and we applaud the Mayor, NYU and the government of NYC and New York for making cybersecurity an important issue.
The majority of companies are unprotected from cybercrime but don’t know what to do.
Cybercrime does not care how big your company is. It is a threat to all businesses.
It’s why the Cyber 360 program (Cyber360.Work) from Apex Technology Services has taken New York and Connecticut by storm. The affordable monthly program provides user-training, penetration testing and auditing of a company’s network. We look to find and patch the holes before the hackers find them and steal data or worse.
Contact us now for an assessment.