Cyber Skills Pathways Under the Spotlight at Europe's Biggest Security Expo

Cisco Talos staffed a demonstration point at the Cisco booth at it-sa Expo&Congress in Nuremberg, a event the author compares to the RSA Conference in San Francisco. Unlike RSA, the expo itself is the main attraction, and the focus is more European. With more than 1,000 exhibitors and 33,000 visitors from 70 countries over three days, it was a very large event.

Major topics included AI used in defensive tools, securing AI systems themselves, and post-quantum cryptography. The local flavour came through in discussions of digital sovereignty and regulatory compliance, including the European rules NIS2, CRA and DORA. Booth conversations also touched on vulnerabilities such as php2shell and broccoli2shell, and on state-sponsored actors.

What surprised the author most was how many teenagers asked for career advice. In Germany, young people typically choose between university and vocational apprenticeships. In IT the split is roughly 80% university and 20% apprenticeship. The author counts close to 30 cyber bachelor programs but no dedicated cyber apprenticeship. The existing IT Specialist apprenticeship offers only specialisations such as application development and system integration, so an initiative is under way to add an IT Security option. This is only the opening of the newsletter, so it does not cover the full piece.