System officials at state universities are discussing plans to increase their information technology staff, with the aim of boosting the school’s cybersecurity.
Governors’ council executives said at a meeting on Friday that about 25% of IT positions are currently vacant in the system.
Discussing future funding requests to the Florida legislature, Ray Rodriguez, president of the state university system, pointed out that recruiting IT talent is a challenge, and that schools can fill the gap by signing service agreements. Said it was filled.
“We have had a hard time recruiting IT talent.
The agency plans to seek about $1 million in the next fiscal year to continue hiring contract services in the IT sector while looking at potential solutions to the staffing problem.
Board vice-president Eric Shirazi said the 25% vacancy rate was “unsustainable” and raised the idea of addressing the shortage in IT-trained students.
“I think if the university system is training students in IT, there might be a way to work with the state to put together a program. “It takes years to work within the state’s IT system,” Shiraghi said.
Rodriguez also mentioned the possibility of requesting funding for a potential “system-wide cybersecurity effort,” although he did not offer a specific proposal on Friday.
“What we’re seeing nationally is that educational institutions are becoming targets for cybersecurity attacks,” Rodriguez said.
Shirazy and other officials agreed that cybersecurity is a serious concern for Florida’s universities.
“The university system is a multi-billion dollar business. And we have over 440,000 customers in the form of students. We have over 100,000 employees. We have a huge amount of sensitive data embedded in our systems, and universities are ripe for this kind of attack anyway,” Shiraghi said.