Optus data breach renews concerns amid skills shortage in cybersecurity

In an episode titled Call the help desk, we're under attack - cybersecurity, the university's deputy leader of the Cyber Security Research Group, Arash Mahboubi, discussed how to tackle those shortages.

Jobs that are difficult to attract talent include cryptographers, professionals who use encryption codes to protect data.

Network administrators, who manage network security and look for breaches within an organisation's systems, are also hard to hire.

"If you look at other education fields like mathematics, it has barely changed since the 1970s; it hasn't had much change," he said.

"In comparison, (in cybersecurity) we have new daily technology patterns released into the market."

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Dr Mahboubi said part of the reason for the skills shortages - for both men and women - was because those who wished to enter the field needed to understand operating systems and how they worked.

"We need to understand the problem in the current digital era before we can address these shortages," he said.

"Cyber security has been around since the 1970s and since then there's been so many different technologies to neutralise this threat."

With the Optus hack, Mr Mahboubi said "we haven't learnt our lesson" from the T-Mobile data breach in 2021.

Last year, there were 50 million data breaches at T-Mobile.

"We haven't learnt how to actively engage with this kind of breach," he said.

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