Shortage of specialists in information security: New Erasmus+ project at the Institute of Computer Science

Information security issues play an increasingly important role in the digital transformation.

Cyberattacks on companies and individuals cause significant financial damage and jeopardize the progress of digitalization in critical areas of society. In order to put a stop to the increasingly professional and diverse threats, expertise in information security is increasingly in demand on the human resources market - however, the search for qualified employees often proves difficult or even remains unsuccessful.

Against this background, an Erasmus+ project was recently launched at the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Innsbruck - together with the Universities of Liechtenstein and Würzburg - to address the causes of the shortage of specialists in information security. The project, led at the Institute of Computer Science by assoz. Prof. Dr. Michael Felderer, focuses on the use of text analysis methods. With the help of these methods, job advertisements will be processed automatically in order to identify the key qualifications required in today’s information security, to analyze the causes of the shortage of skilled workers, and finally to evaluate the effect of potential measures. Part of the project work will also include the analysis of academic curricula in order to compare the educational profiles of different universities in the field of information security and contrast them with the key qualifications currently in demand on the personnel market.

The results are expected to be presented to the public at the end of 2021. The technical tools used will also be made available to the public and the scientific community as open source software for follow-up studies and projects.