COVID and the cybersecurity workforce
This is continued from Part one: The infuriating, avoidable, destructive disaster of COVID and the cybersecurity industry, Part two: COVID if it was a cyber threat, a timeline of events, Part three: COVID myths versus facts, and Part four: Firsthand experiences of COVID in the cybersecurity industry.
With millions of people out of the workforce due to Long COVID, and millions more who will likely be permanently disabled by Long COVID within the next year or two, it’s inevitable that staff shortages in cybersecurity will make industries everywhere less cyber secure.
Cybersecurity staffing shortages were already noted in research conducted just before the pandemic. From NASDAQ’s blog:
“The 2020 (ISC)² Cybersecurity Workforce Study examined the global talent shortage in the field and found that companies could use 3.1 million additional workers, nearly double the amount that exist today. (In the U.S. alone, another 879,000 are needed.) More than half of the study’s respondents — some 56% — said cybersecurity staff shortages were putting their organizations at risk.
‘The cybersecurity workforce gap, simply put, is the difference between the number of skilled professionals that organizations need to protect their critical assets and the actual capacity available to take on this work,’ the study said. ‘It is not an estimate of open positions available to applicants.’
The good news is that gap shrunk from 4 million to 3.1 million last year. The bad news is some of those gaps are in critical roles. Colonial Pipeline, for instance, reportedly had two key security leadership positions vacant when it was hit with the ransomware attack.
Surprisingly, despite the risks and recent incursions, such as the hack of SolarWinds, which compromised a number of U.S. government agencies and major corporations, there’s not a big push to boost hiring in the cybersecurity space. Some 48% of respondents to the (ISC)² study said they planned to increase their staffing in this area over the next 12 months, roughly the same number as the previous two years. (Curiously, 15% said they plan to decrease their cybersecurity staffing, a 5% increase over two years ago.)”
Even economists are alarmed at the data that shows the impact that millions and millions of people with Long COVID will have on the economy, with damage in the trillions. Not billions, trillions.
From Observer:
“The impact of long Covid, a collection of debilitating symptoms that linger after patients recover from their initial illness, will likely be felt on the U.S. economy as well as the nation’s health.
One in five people aged 18 to 64, and one in four of those aged 65 and older, developed at least one of the panoply of symptoms — such as crushing fatigue, musculoskeletal pain, heart problems, kidney failure, blood clots and diabetes — that can follow a coronavirus infection, according to a study of 300,000 patients released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention May 24.
Considering that scientists estimate that there have been more than 80 million Covid cases in the U.S., there is likely to be significant economic fallout from the potentially more than 15 million people with long Covid. The full costs aren’t yet known, said David Cutler, a professor of economics at Harvard.
‘One of the things that is important, and it’s really troubling, is that this is a very common disease and we don’t know exactly how common it is,’ Cutler said. ‘And that partly reflects the fact that we haven’t paid enough attention to issues involved with long Covid.’
In October of 2020, Cutler and former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers published an article estimating a loss of $2.6 trillion from long-term complications of Covid, through 2021. That figure included costs associated with loss of enjoyment of life, losses due to people’s inability to work as much as when they were healthy, and the costs to the healthcare system, Cutler said.
Based on the new numbers, long Covid is likely to have a major impact both on the healthcare system because many of these patients will need years of care, and to the general economy because of the loss to the workforce of people with severe symptoms having to quit work.
‘The 18 to 64 year old group is the working age population,’ said David Kass, a clinical professor of finance at the University of Maryland School of Business. ‘With people withdrawing from the workforce, that increases wage pressure during a time when there is already a shortage of workers.’
One good thing for these workers is the greater acceptance of work from home, Kass said. ‘Those with long Covid may still be able to work from home to some extent, but probably not as effectively as they would have if not for long Covid,’ he added.
Patients who are most disabled — those who can’t get out of bed or walk a quarter of a mile or up a flight of stairs — may make up a smaller percentage than what the CDC reported, said Shruti Mehta, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. ‘Looking at people who report they are not able to function in life, we’ve seen about 3 to 5 percent, which is still a large number.’
The size of the potential problem demands major interventions, Cutler said. That includes doing whatever it takes to encourage the U.S. population to wear masks and get vaccinated, and to closely monitor global outbreaks.
‘My bottom line is, with a potential cost of $2.6 trillion, that’s so big that there’s nothing, no preventive action, that wouldn’t be worth doing to reduce the burden of long-Covid,’ Cutler said.”
Closing thoughts
The CDC failed us. Trump failed us. Biden failed us. Here in Canada, Trudeau failed us. Big business failed us. Vaccine patents and Bill Gates failed us. The organizers of cybersecurity events failed us. These entities deserve your anger and your blame.
Get your COVID news from medical researchers who don’t work for the CDC, and from disabled people as I linked to in the first part.
As much as you possibly can, wear an N95 mask whenever you’re not home. Indoors and outdoors.
Get new vaccines if and when they ever become available. But behave as if you aren’t vaccinated, because 2020/2021’s vaccines are outdated for current strains of COVID.
Avoid offline events as much as possible, especially if they have crowds. Use RAT and PCR tests as much as you can. Take multiple tests to increase accuracy.
Please support and check out these organizations:
The CDC failed us, but The People’s CDC gives me hope.
“The People’s CDC is a collective of public health practitioners, scientists, healthcare workers, educators, advocates and people from all walks of life working to reduce the harmful impacts of COVID-19.”
Donate A Mask is a charity that donates N95 masks to Canadians who cannot afford them.
Direct Relief provides worldwide COVID aid in the form of protective equipment, critical care, and emergency response.
Share this post, and take care of yourself.
