Mind the skills gap: preparing Europe for a safe digital future

When it comes to equipping the European Union for a digital future, there’s a two-part question that policymakers rightly often ask themselves: do our countries and citizens have the skills to seize the opportunities presented by digitalization — and can we protect ourselves from malicious cyber threats?

While Europe faces a multifaceted challenge, it’s clear that emerging technologies will present exciting growth opportunities in parallel with increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks. No organization can afford to be complacent.

Preparing for an ever-more digital future while ensuring citizens and the workforce have the right skills to embrace this new era of connectivity isn’t just a ‘nice-to-have’, it is essential to both competitiveness and resilience.

Margrethe Vestager, executive vice president of the European Commission, said in a speech[1] presenting the EU Cyber Solidarity Act and Cybersecurity Skills Academy: “Cybersecurity is a must-have. To protect our societies, to protect us as citizens. And to protect our economy.” Given the skills gap in cyber-defense alone, addressing the status quo is of paramount importance.

It will not come as a surprise that Cisco shares this thinking. By making 2023 the European Year of Skills, the European Commission has recognized that this is a crucial moment. And by setting ambitious 2030 targets — such as equipping 80 percent of Europeans with basic digital skills and establishing a workforce of 20 million ICT specialists across the EU — the Commission is putting its goals into action.

European leaders also understand the crucial importance of boosting cybersecurity, and thereby making Europe as a whole more resilient. This is the thinking behind the EU’s Cyber Solidarity Act, which is designed to strengthen the bloc’s capacities to detect cyberattacks as well as bolster its ability to prepare for and respond to significant and large-scale cybersecurity threats and attacks. It’s also the driving force for the creation of the Cyber Skills Academy, a European policy initiative that brings together existing efforts to boost related skills.

This undertaking will help fill the current 3.5 million cybersecurity job vacancies around the world. And at Cisco, we will be doing everything we can to help bridge this divide effectively. Given the urgency of the skills challenge, none of us can afford to take a foot off the accelerator. It is why, in March this year, Cisco announced a new goal to train 250,000 people with cybersecurity skills across the EU by mid-2025. This is part of a larger Cisco ambition to upskill 2.6 million people over the next decade in Europe through our Cisco Networking Academy program — one of the world’s longest running skills-to-jobs initiatives.

By deploying our massive global network of around 12,000 educational institutions and almost 30,000 instructors, we have trained over 2.5 million students in Europe alone over the past 25 years — enabling a workforce that is equipped to meet the future of work, security, education, energy, manufacturing, health care and more.

To address the growing digital skills shortage and critical IT and cyber-related vacancies, the public and private sectors must also recognize that there are untapped pools of talent across the globe. Cisco Networking Academy’s partnership with the University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszów, Poland, is one of the most recent examples of this as we work to train 10,000 Ukrainian refugees in the next two years.

Meanwhile, our partnership with Randstad aims to re-skill and upskill 300,000 people in cybersecurity, programming and infrastructure automation. It’s already up-and-running in the Netherlands and Italy, with other countries to follow this year.  

Although success will not come easily, the building blocks are in place — including an understanding of the importance of digital skills at the highest levels of decision-making. And there are three essential considerations we will continue to push in every conversation with decision-makers.

First, people need to get the training the way they want and need, and that can vary greatly. Digital skills training must be flexible, easy-to-access and, whenever possible, free of charge. Flexibility also means training programs are more inclusive — a requisite to address the gender gap and create a level-playing field for people with disabilities.

Second, certification is important — not just for a sense of achievement, but because it makes people more employable. It’s not about degrees. It’s about making sure people get the right skills to meet the needs of the market. Cisco Networking Academy certifications, for example, are considered a gold standard across the global tech industry and have brought employment opportunities to millions of people around the world.

Finally, this must be a collaborative effort. Cisco CEO and chair Chuck Robbins recently said, “It is the responsibility of leaders in industry, government and academia to work together to equip our communities with the necessary digital skills to compete in the 21st century”. Simply put, we are far greater than the sum of our parts.

And that emphasis on partnership is a perspective that Cisco’s CEO is bringing to his role on the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council’s Talent For Growth Task Force, a transatlantic diverse stakeholders group working to advance public and private sector initiatives to improve transatlantic workforce development and competitiveness.

Nobody can be sure where digital technologies are taking us exactly. Uncertainty is an inevitable feature of change. But the possibilities are endless, and the potential benefits are gigantic, across almost every aspect of our lives.

Developed and managed responsibly, used with the right skills, technology can be a powerful force for good. It is our collective responsibility as businesses, policymakers, innovators and academia. This is a story that is still being written in Europe and the world, and Cisco is determined to play its part.

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