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INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Enterprise Security
Urgent steps needed to close
Africa’s high-end IT security
skills gaps
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Paul Williams, Country Manager – Southern Africa at
Fortinet, says businesses cannot afford to wait five
or more years for security engineers to hone high-
end skills – new skills development models must be
introduced now as the Fourth Industrial Revolution
sweeps the continent.
biotechnologies. These new technologies are
changing the way organisations run and the
skills needed to run them.
Southern African businesses report a brain
drain of their most skilled IT and information
security staff, forcing them to import
scarce skills at a premium themselves. This
situation is not sustainable and unless new
approaches are taken to fast-track the
development of high-end IT security skills,
Africa’s economic growth will be constrained.
But high-level security engineers who are
certified and experienced across security
specifically, as well as in analytics, networks,
programming and a range of other
disciplines, are in short supply. It can take
five to 10 years to acquire the certification
and skills needed to manage high-level
security demands across the entire IT
infrastructure. African business cannot wait
this long.
Paul Williams, Country
Manager – Southern
Africa at Fortinet
S
pecialised IT skills are in short supply
worldwide and African businesses have
long been under pressure to innovate
and grow despite an acute skills shortage
– particularly in the data science and IT
security spaces. In an environment in which
cyber risk is increasingly sophisticated and
threatens to devastate businesses that are
ill-equipped to mitigate risk, this is a growing
concern for all organisations.
But adding to the urgency with which they
need to mitigate new information security
risks, Africa is confronted with the Fourth
Industrial Revolution, which is set to change
African business virtually overnight. This
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will sharply increase the need for high-end
IT skills. According to the World Economic
Forum’s report The Future of Jobs and
Skills in Africa: Preparing the Region for the
Fourth Industrial Revolution, 41% of all work
activities in South Africa are susceptible to
automation, as are 44% in Ethiopia, 46%
in Nigeria, 48% in Mauritius, 52% in Kenya
and 53% in Angola.
As the Fourth Industrial Revolution sweeps
the continent, key drivers of change by
2020 will include big data, remote work,
cloud technology, the emergence of the
sharing economy, robotics, Internet of
Things, next-generation manufacturing and
Urgent steps must be taken to fast-track
high-level security skills development,
through concerted collaborative efforts by
enterprises, academia and the IT security
industry itself. Fortinet’s own model has
changed in recent years to help address the
skills shortfall.
Our multi-pronged approach includes
engaging with tertiary institutions
to introduce more comprehensive IT
security skills courses, a heavy investment
in upskilling our partner networks and
introducing opportunities for practical
training wherever possible. For example, our
annual Tech Expert event in Gauteng this
year replaced ‘death by Power Point’ with
competitive, hands-on challenges to support
discovery and product knowledge. We expect
to see more industry players taking this
approach in future. n
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