It’s our mission at Palo Alto Networks to make each day safer than the one before. That’s why on Tuesday, July 19, 2022, Palo Alto Networks was honored to be included at the National Cyber Workforce and Education Summit convened by National Cyber Director, Chris Inglis. The event paved the way for greater focus and effort to build an inclusive and diverse cyber workforce of the future. Through cybersecurity awareness, education and training, we can create and prioritize new skill-based pathways to cybersecurity jobs.
Education, Awareness and Training
The more we drive awareness for all the skills, diversity of thought and experience needed to keep our world safe each day, the more we can attract, train and educate the next-generation of cyber professionals. Innovation needs diversity to succeed and cybersecurity is a field where all are welcome.
Palo Alto Networks is deeply committed to building an inclusive and diverse cyber workforce. From cyber professionals to university students and global K-12 students, we are focused on enabling the next-generation through cybersecurity awareness, education and training across industries, Boards and the C-suite.
Here are just a few of the ways that Palo Alto Networks education and inclusion and diversity programs are helping our industry develop and grow the cyber workforce of the future:
- Palo Alto Networks Cybersecurity Academy: This is a free curriculum, ranging from introductory to advanced cybersecurity courses, used by more than 2,000 universities, community colleges, high schools and middle schools.
- Palo Alto Networks Cyber A.C.E.S.: This encompasses programs that provide youth, ages 5-15, with educational resources that help them protect their digital way of life.
- Partnership with the Girl Scouts of the USA: Palo Alto Networks created the first-ever cybersecurity badge program with age appropriate content available across all levels of Girl Scouts, from Daisies to Ambassadors. Now, over 300,000 badges have been earned across all corners of the country, scaling throughout the Girl Scout ecosystem and reaching Girl Scouts overseas.
- Cyber STARS: Palo Alto Networks is committed to making a difference by addressing racial disparity in technology, particularly in the Black community, by increasing exposure, access and support to underrepresented students interested in pursuing a career in technology.
- Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS): Palo Alto Networks was a founding partner of WiCyS and remains an active partner. WiCyS helps build a strong cybersecurity workforce with gender equality by facilitating recruitment, retention and advancement for women in the field. WiCyS offers mentoring, training programs, scholarships, both virtual and in-person.
Automation to Complement Cyber Workforce Investment
First and foremost, an effective national cyber education and workforce initiative requires an understanding of the types of cybersecurity jobs that the workforce of tomorrow will demand. People, process and technology will ultimately work in concert to drive desired cybersecurity outcomes, meaning the cyber talent pipeline must receive a high-caliber of training that complements, withstands and enhances the pace of tech innovation.
As an example, the number of cyber threats are increasing exponentially, and adversaries are using artificial intelligence (AI) to generate these attacks. Fighting AI-generated threats requires AI-powered cybersecurity solutions, not manual processes. For this reason, Palo Alto Networks has been working to reinvent how organizations detect and remediate cyber attacks. Through AI-powered automation, we’ve brought the mean response time to new attacks from 27 minutes down to seconds.
For our customers, the world’s largest enterprises, we are helping security teams re-imagine security operation centers, with automation and AI / ML at the core, such as Cortex XSIAM, the industry’s first AI-driven SOC platform that will transform the way data, analytics and automation are deployed by security organizations.
Highly effective automation can block most attacks without manual intervention and focus our most precious resource – people – on the most sophisticated attacks. Our objectives consistently revolve around making life easier for CISOs and security teams by making them more secure, while also reducing alert fatigue and alleviating security talent shortage.
Visit our website to learn more about our education services, inclusion and diversity strategies and broader corporate responsibility initiatives.