Mohana Ravindranath

A global lack of cybersecurity talent could make nations more vulnerable to cyberattack, and governments aren't doing enough to fill that gap, a new report finds. About 33 percent of respondents to a recent survey — spanning eight nations — said a cyber skills shortage does “direct and measurable damage” to their organizations, according to a joint report compiled by Intel Security and Washington think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The majority, 76 percent, said they didn’t think their governments were doing enough to recruit a better workforce. The survey tapped hundreds of executives in various countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, Mexico and Israel. The scarcest skills overall were “intrusion detection, secure software development, and attack mitigation,” the report found. About 71 percent of respondents said that skills shortage makes them “more desirable hacking targets." The US cyber shortage appears to be less dire than that of Australia or Mexico. In those countries, almost 90 percent of respondents said there was a skills gap, compared to a little more than 80 percent of US respondents. Only about 70 percent of United Kingdom respondents reported a shortage.

Public spending on sensor technology might be up, but Internet of things enthusiasts shouldn’t get too excited about a futuristic, hyperconnected government. Without top-down strategies for using networks of devices and embedded sensors, federal adoption “will likely remain low,” a new report from the Center for Data Innovation suggests.

Other barriers include a lack of funding and general risk aversion in government buying. The technology is slowly gaining traction in the federal market — the government spent $8.8 billion on the Internet of things in fiscal 2015, up 20 percent from fiscal 2014, according to a report from big data and analytics firm Govini. It has also garnered congressional attention: A bipartisan group of senators last year passed a resolution calling for a national strategy for the internet of things that would outline how it could boost the domestic economy. But no federal agencies have their own broad plans for using that network, according to a report compiled by the Center for Data Innovation, a division of Washington think tank the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. No agency, CDI found, "addresses how it will use the Internet of things in its strategic plan.”