IBM focuses on shortage of AI talent in IT and security

IBM has been warning about the cybersecurity skills gap for several years now and has recently released a report on the lack of artificial intelligence (AI) skills across Europe. The company said in a Friday email to SC Media that cybersecurity has been experiencing a significant workforce and skills shortage globally, and AI can offer a crucial technology path for helping solve it. "Given that AI skillsets are not yet widespread, embedding AI into existing toolsets that security teams are already using in their daily processes will be key to overcoming this barrier," IBM stated in the email. "AI has great potential to solve some of the biggest challenges facing security teams -- from analyzing the massive amounts of security data that exists to helping resource-strapped security teams prioritize threats that pose the greatest risk, or even recommending and automating parts of the response process." Oliver Tavakoli, CTO at Vectra, said the potential of machine learning (ML) and AI materially helping in the pursuit of a large set of problems across many industries has created an acute imbalance in the supply and demand of AI talent.