Because of its basis in digital technology and historical links to hacking communities, cyber security is often unfairly maligned as a subject only accessible to a small subset of technical nerds and social recluses. This has hurt the public image of cyber security, impacting its attractiveness as a profession. People are unlikely to want to become cyber security professionals if they cannot see people like themselves in cyber security roles.
Perhaps more crucially, people are unlikely to be attracted to cyber security (at least not for the right reasons) if the subject is solely associated with breaking into computer systems. It is unfortunate that public perception is skewed this way because cyber security has powerful positive social messages to convey. Cyber security is about fixing things that are broken, enabling new technologies to flourish, empowering communities and businesses online, protecting people from malicious actors, and catching those malicious actors. It is, at its core, a profession that helps make the world a better place. Contrary to its historical image, the cyber security profession should be associated with large amounts of kudos, like medicine or engineering.
There are opportunities to amplify this social message and thereby increase the attractiveness of the cyber security profession. In recruitment campaigns for job roles and training programmes the social message should be included as a core element of the benefits of working in cyber security. Similarly, educational courses should include the positive social functions of cyber security as part of the ethical considerations many of these courses already cover, and the content should be upfront at the start of a course to set the tone from the beginning, not an addendum at the end. Moreover, when countries consider their approaches to setting standards for cyber security workforces, the social message can be incorporated as part of a standard. Exactly which social messages will resonate with local audiences may differ between countries, but having a selection of messages to choose from that have been used elsewhere would be beneficial when setting standards.