The European Cyber Security Organisation (ECSO) joins forces with the Women4Cyber Foundation to address important gaps in the cybersecurity sector, with the Roard2Cyber platform. This collaboration aims to reduce flaws that concern skills development, access to knowledge, gender balance, and job marketplace adopting a lifelong learning approach to disseminate, update, and improve key skills of current and future talents in cybersecurity. On the other hand, this platform will serve as a crossroad to gather employers’ offers and workers’ candidatures, facilitating hiring processes in the cyber sector.
The new platform aims to eliminate gaps in the cybersecurity sector as a whole. Estimates made by EU Neighbourseast, using data from Eurostat, the Stem Education Guide, and DESI, indicate a current expertise gap in Europe ranging from 260,000 to 560,000 professionals. Moreover, only 19% of ICT specialists and about one-third of STEM graduates are female.
In the spirit of lifelong learning, Road2Cyber encompasses all the activities that improve education of youth: ECSO’s catalogue Youth4Cyber aims at educating and raising the awareness of young people (6 to 26-year olds) on the fundamental concepts of cybersecurity, cyber hygiene and stimulate an interest for a career in cybersecurity among the European youth. The objective is to cultivate a critical and informed attitude among young individuals while also highlighting the potential career opportunities in cybersecurity.
Road2Cyber aims at accompanying users throughout their lifetime to raise awareness on the importance of cybersecurity, build up their career path in the field, and change the vision on cybersecurity jobs, especially to encourage women to get a job in cybersecurity”.
The core objective of the Road2Cyber initiative is to enhance the proficiency of cyber skills via “Training in Cyber” among the workforce and HR professionals, fostering increased expertise and more effective hiring processes. The platform will support career progression, including awareness, offer training and mentorship programs, enabling providers to propose and present courses, while users can search for opportunities that align with their needs. This framework allows for the reskilling or upskilling of various expertise and awareness levels. This initiative is not only beneficial for job seekers; it also targets industry employees, aiming to augment their competencies and streamline future recruitment processes.
The Road2Cyber platform includes also a job platform specifically dedicated to ‘Jobs in Cyber.’ Recruiters have the opportunity to post job advertisements, and job seekers can explore cybersecurity job offers. This platform aims to streamline interactions among different stakeholders, offering a Talent Pool as a matchmaking tool where recruiters can find talents and where any job seeker can register for free.
To support access to the job market, ECSO and the Women4Cyber Foundation work in close collaboration with a European community of HR professionals and with industry to help reduce the workforce gap and speed up the hiring process in cybersecurity in Europe and to address the needs of both recruiters and job seekers.
Road2Cyber is a project made possible by the combined efforts of ECSO’s Skills & Human Factors – Road2Cyber working group and Women4Cyber Foundation’s Job Corner, striving for a cyber resilient, informed and gender-inclusive next generation digital Europe, through increased education, skills development, access to trainings and jobs. The platform will be accessible first to ECSO members and Women4Cyber’s sponsors.
