Security skills shortage is real, and it's not going away anytime soon

There's good news and bad on the cybersecurity skills availability front.

On the positive side, the current shortage of cybersecurity professionals in the U.S will likely resolve itself over the next several years as the result of recent efforts involving education, training and security awareness.

But for the time being, organizations will find it disturbingly difficult to find the skilled workers they need to defend themselves from internal and external threats, the RAND Corp. warned this week. Not only will cybersecurity skills become increasingly costly, they will also become very hard to come by in the near future, said Martin Libicki, one of the authors of a 125-page report from RAND.