At the time this story is published — October 2019 — more than 300,000 cybersecurity jobs are open across the U.S. California alone has nearly 37,000 jobs to fill, the most of any state in the country and second only to the Washington, DC, metropolitan area, home to many national security organizations.

That number of job openings is projected grow to more than one million soon, says Tony Coulson, Ph.D., executive director of the Cyber Security Center at California State University, San Bernardino, and a professor of information and decision sciences in The Jack H. Brown College at CSUSB.

“This is an all-hands-on-deck moment for this country, because across many sectors we do not have enough people. …Government, health care, financial and critical infrastructure and utilities are the biggest sectors of our economy that are under constant assault from mercenaries."

The urgent need for expertise virtually assures a good job for anyone entering the field now. “The growth rate for information security analyst jobs is 32 percent—much faster than the average for all occupations," notes Ed Hudson, chief information security officer for the California State University. “California is at or near the top for the highest employment level and mean salary for these jobs. And these statistics don't take into account related fields like privacy policy, data governance and information security management."

Visit the CSU Office of the Chancellor's website to read an informative seven-part series on cybersecurity featuring Dr. Keith Clement, professor of criminology in the College of Social Sciences and Dr. Shaheb Tayeb, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Lyles College of Engineering.