Cyber Security Catching Up As An MBA Concentration

Cyber security as an MBA concentration has been catching up with more and more Business schools all over the world including it in the program in view of increasing demand from a growing number of organisations concerned about keeping their data safe in a connected world.

According to PwC, nine out of 10 large organisations suffer security breaches and the number had doubled in 2015. The seriousness of the situation could be seen from reports that the personal data of more than 300 million people were stolen in 15 largest recorded cyber attacks during the year.

The biggest attack by Carbanak, a criminal gang, hit more than 100 banks across 11 countries. Estimated losses tripled from $300 million on February 14 to $1 billion only a day later.

According to a survey by Experis, ManpowerGroup’s professional resourcing and project-based solutions arm, cyber security was the most frequently cited in-demand skill set globally at 32%, nearly twice as much as the next mentioned, software development at 18%.

Globally, the most in demand and hard to find areas of expertise as mentioned by IT leaders are Information security, software development, Business Analytics.

Among the Schools offering Cyber security MBA concentration/certificate is University of Dayton, Ohio’s School of Business Administration with a three course sequence in cyber-security resulting in a certificate or MBA concentration.

The credential qualifies students to support the government and industry through addressing domain specific requirements and preparing candidates for three highly sought after DoD certificates. The courses are Security Management for Information Systems, Managing Telecommunication & Networking Systems and Managing Internet Security.

Meanwhile, Coventry University, UK, is offering a 3-year part time blended MBA in Cyber Security (MBACS), open only to UK/EU students. While exposing students to a common core of key management issues within the fields of Strategy, Finance and Accounting, Human Resource Management and Marketing, it also gives an opportunity to undertake an individual or group research project, based on a real cyber security issue at the dissertation stage.

The Cyber Security concentration offered by School of Business University at Albany is designed to train the next generation of professionals to understand the vulnerabilities and exploits in information systems available to cyber attackers. Students learn how to identify organizational vulnerabilities, understand threats, analyze risks, and select controls to mitigate risks. They also learn how to implement security in organizations, respond when incidents occur, and design systems to prevent cyber-attacks.

The B-school says it has a long-standing special relationship with the “Big 4” accounting firms: Deloitte, EY (Ernst & Young), KPMG, and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). These four, as well as a host of other companies and organizations are hiring for positions in cyber security, governance, risk and compliance, information security consulting, forensics and regulatory compliance.

As to why an MBA graduate destined to be the CEO or any other C-Suit post should bother about what essential is an IT engineer’s field, there are several important issues at stake like cyber attacks damaging the company reputation and the firms at times underestimating their vulnerability to such attacks that may start on a small scale and then suddenly assume gargantuan proportions like in the Carbanak case. Under such circumstances, the gap between executives and techies have to be bridged.