skip to main content
10.1145/3322385.3322418acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagescprConference Proceedingsconference-collections
short-paper

Employer Preferences for Cybersecurity Skills among Information Systems Graduates

Published:12 June 2019Publication History

ABSTRACT

Recognizing the global need for cybersecurity professionals and shedding light on the employers' preference of skills give educators the opportunity to improve their process to prepare future generations for the workforce. The goal of this paper is to acquire a collection of skills employers value when hiring for a new cybersecurity position. Our research plan is split into three phases. First, we will develop an initial list of cybersecurity skills by using a systematic literature review to assess what past research has found. Next, we will validate the importance of these skills through a ratings-based survey of employers. Finally, we will refine and prioritize the validated skills using two preference capturing studies - rank order survey and conjoint analysis. Discussion and implications for future research and academic departments in cybersecurity are provided.

References

  1. Robert Ackerman. 2019. Too few cybersecurity professionals is a gigantic problem for 2019. Tech Crunch. Retrieved January 29, 2019 from https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/27/too-few-cybersecurity-professionals-is-a-gigantic-problem-for-2019/Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  2. Raj Arora and Charles Stoner. 1992. The Importance of Skills of M.B.A Students Seeking Marketing Positions: An Employers' Perspective. Journal of Marketing Education 14, 2 (1992), 2--9.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  3. William M. Baker and Calvert C. McGregor. 2000. Empirically Assessing the Importance of Characteristics of Accounting Students. Journal of Education for Business 75, 3 (February 2000), 149--157.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  4. Matthias Baum and Rüdiger Kabst. 2013. Conjoint implications on job preferences: the moderating role of involvement. International Journal of Human Resource Management 24, 7 (May 2013), 1393--1417.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  5. E. W. Boatwright and Miriam B. Stamps. 1988. Employers' Importance Ratings of Student Characteristics: A Conjoint Analysis Approach. Journal of Marketing Education 10, 2 (1988), 74--78.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  6. Nita G. Brooks, Timothy H. Greer, and Steven A. Morris. 2018. Information systems security job advertisement analysis: Skills review and implications for information systems curriculum. Journal of Education for Business 93, 5 (July 2018), 213--221.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  7. M. Carlton and Y. Levy. 2015. Expert assessment of the top platform independent cybersecurity skills for non-IT professionals. In Conference Proceedings - IEEE SOUTHEASTCON.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  8. Wm. Arthur Conklin and Matt Bishop. 2018. Contrasting the CSEC 2017 and the CAE Designation Requirements.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  9. Wm. Arthur Conklin, Raymond Cline, and Tiffany Roosa. Re-engineering Cybersecurity Education in the US: An Analysis of the Critical Factors. 2006--2014. Retrieved from https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=6758852 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  10. J. Dawson and R. Thomson. 2018. The future cybersecurity workforce: Going beyond technical skills for successful cyber performance. Frontiers in Psychology 9, JUN (2018).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  11. Callum J. Floyd and Mary Ellen Gordon. 1998. What skills are most important? A comparison of employer, student, and staff perceptions. Journal of Marketing Education 20, 2 (1998), 103--109.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  12. Husam Haqaf and Murat Koyuncu. 2018. Understanding key skills for information security managers. International Journal of Information Management 43, (December 2018), 165--172.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  13. Lance Hoffman, Diana Burley, and Costis Toregas. 2012. Holistically Building the Cybersecurity Workforce. IEEE Software 10, 2 (2012), 33--39. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  14. (ISC)2. 2018. (ISC)2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study. Retrieved from https://www.isc2.org/-/media/ISC2/Research/2018-ISC2-Cybersecurity-Workforce-Study.ashxGoogle ScholarGoogle Scholar
  15. Joint Task Force for Computing Curricula 2005. 2005. Computing Curricula 2005: The Overview Report. Retrieved from https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/education/curricula-recommendations/cc2005-march06final.pdfGoogle ScholarGoogle Scholar
  16. K.S. Jones, A.S. Namin, and M.E. Armstrong. 2018. The core cyber-defense knowledge, skills, and abilities that cybersecurity students should learn in school: Results from interviews with cybersecurity professionals. ACM Transactions on Computing Education 18, 3 (01 2018). Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  17. Kenneth J. Knapp, Christopher Maurer, and Miloslava Plachkinova. 2017. Maintaining a Cybersecurity Curriculum: Professional Certifications as Valuable Guidance. Journal of Information Systems Education 28, 2 (December 2017), 101--113.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  18. William Newhouse, Stephanie Keith, Benjamin Scribner, and Greg Witte. 2017. National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) Cybersecurity Workforce Framework. National Institute of Standards and Technology. Retrieved fromGoogle ScholarGoogle Scholar
  19. Celia Paulsen, Ernest McDuffie, William Newhouse, and Patricia Toth. 2012. NICE: Creating a Cybersecurity Workforce and Aware Public. IEEE Security & Privacy 10, 3 (2012), 76--79. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  20. Leigh-Ellen Potter and Greg Vickers. 2015. What Skills do you Need to Work in Cyber Security? A Look at the Australian Market. In Proceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGMIS Conference on Computers and People Research, 67--72. DOI: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2751957.2751967Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  21. Tanya Ruetzler, William Baker, Dennis Reynolds, Jim Taylor, and Brian Allen. 2014. Perceptions of technical skills required for successful management in the hospitality industry-An exploratory study using conjoint analysis. International Journal of Hospitality Management 39, (May 2014), 157--164.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  22. Tanya Ruetzler, Jim Taylor, Dennis Reynolds, and William Baker. 2011. Understanding perceptions of professional attributes using conjoint analysis. International Journal of Hospitality Management 30, (January 2011), 551--557.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  23. Harold F Tipton. 2010. Official (ISC)2 Guide to the CISSP CBK (Second ed.). Taylor and Francis Group LLC, FL: Boca Raton. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library

Index Terms

  1. Employer Preferences for Cybersecurity Skills among Information Systems Graduates

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Login options

    Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

    Sign in
    • Published in

      cover image ACM Conferences
      SIGMIS-CPR '19: Proceedings of the 2019 on Computers and People Research Conference
      June 2019
      211 pages
      ISBN:9781450360883
      DOI:10.1145/3322385

      Copyright © 2019 ACM

      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

      Publisher

      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      • Published: 12 June 2019

      Permissions

      Request permissions about this article.

      Request Permissions

      Check for updates

      Qualifiers

      • short-paper

      Acceptance Rates

      SIGMIS-CPR '19 Paper Acceptance Rate20of30submissions,67%Overall Acceptance Rate300of480submissions,63%

    PDF Format

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader