Online Calling Cards and Professional Profiles in Cybersecurity From Social Media

Abstract

Demand is very high for people to work in various cybersecurity professions and ceteris paribus that demand may well continue into the near term. While there are more formal trails for employment, such as higher-educational pathways, performance in cybersecurity competitions, participation in professional conferences, and social media presentations may all offer less conventional paths into cybersecurity hiring. Through a convenience sample across a number of social media platforms and bottom-up coding, this work explores some aspects of cybersecurity professional profiles (“calling cards”) available on the open Social Web and what may be learned about respective skills and capabilities from these glimmers of the person(s) behind the profiles. These profiles are assessed based on a 2x2 axis with focuses on (1) target skills and (2) personhood attributes. From these analyses, some tentative insights are shared about the cybersecurity calling cards and how informative they may be for recruitment and retention of cybersecurity workers.