Industry research forecasts that, by 2021, there will be 3.5 million cybersecurity-related jobs, yet only a fraction of them will be filled. This labor shortage could lead to tremendous risks for government agencies as well as industry. But, on the Government Technology Insider podcast, Cylance’s Malcolm Harkins proposed an alternative view.

Harkins pointed out that the major issue facing IT organizations is an expanding workload. But, he suggested, “What’s creating the skills gap and the labor shortage has been because we are too reactive.” Promoting a shift towards “proactive, preventative jobs,” he made the point that, with limited resources, a stronger, preventative control architecture would reduce the need for people to react to threats. “I could also look at the skills shortage as an opportunity to re architect and reinvent the approach.”

Harkins said he also sees opportunities to transform the way IT security is managed and performed, with better, smarter tools – including artificial intelligence and machine learning tools – that allow humans to focus on analyzing and acting on data, instead of succumbing to, as he put it, “alert fatigue.”

To hear more of Harkins’ insights and actionable advice on mitigating the growing cybersecurity labor shortage, listen to the podcast here.