According to Cybersecurity Ventures, there will be 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs in 2021. This high-demand field is currently ranked at #1 with increasing growth in analytical, threat intelligence, mobile security + cloud security jobs. With our daily lives moving further into “the cloud,” there is no better time than now to become a part of the cybersecurity industry.

Why the momentum?

Think about how much is now web-based and mobile accessible. From virtual reality to prime shipping to your digital insurance cards, we calendar invite and autopay everything. Think back 15 years when there were no iPhones around, no Ubers to request, or Starbucks mobile orders to make. I carelessly rode by bike around the neighborhood and inserted VHS tapes from my classic movie collection into the VCR.

Zooming in on the topic, today women are underrepresented in computer science. In fact, they make up less than 20% of U.S. tech jobs. Now with all the research done behind computer programming, I’ll take the honor and share that females are proven to be better coders (though, apparently only “if they hide their gender”).

Even if we don’t take it to the research, (there is plenty out there) there’s a few successful women in tech we can recall. Take Sheryl Sandberg, for example. She is the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook since 2008, the founder of Lean In + previous vice president at Google. Or how about Marissa Mayer? She is an American information technology executive, former CEO of Yahoo! + previous Google employee that started out as a code writer and moved up to product manager and then director of consumer web products. And may I mention Susan Wojcicki? She is the CEO of YouTube and the person who managed its $1.65 billion purchase. And just to throw it out there, Google was incorporated out of her garage. (Ah, the brilliance birthed in garages.)

With jobs in cybersecurity paying anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000, a career in this field holds great benefits and future growth, especially since businesses in the industry are willing to offer competitive six figure salaries once they find the right candidate for the job.

Zooming out locally on the topic, Florida Polytechnic University continues expanding their programs to take on today’s fastest growing fields. Offering degrees in computer engineering, data science, computer science, electrical engineering, business analytics + mechanical engineering, it may be worth looking into.

So to all the tech savvy experts out there and modern technology users on the rise, there are unfilled jobs waiting for you.

You may become the next Margaret Hamilton, who wrote the code for the Apollo 11 mission, or Joan Clarke, a Cambridge mathematician that helped build some of the earliest computers used to decipher German codes during WWII.

If you already have a job in computer security, share what you do. We’ll take it in an email or DM. Snail mail too, if you so desire.

- Jessica