Thousands of college students had their final exams rescheduled and their grades delayed when the Canvas platform was hacked earlier this month. The group ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for breaching Instructure, the company behind the learning management system used by about 40% of universities. The attack exposed student names, email addresses, ID numbers, and communications from some institutions. Google’s Threat Intelligence Group has disclosed that criminal hackers had used an A.I. model to discover and weaponize a previously unknown software flaw that could have caused “a mass vulnerability exploitation operation.” Together, these incidents signal the increasing frequency of cyberattacks. The tools behind them are getting faster, cheaper, and more autonomous. The deeper question is who is defending against them.
According to an the ISC2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study, there is a global shortage of 4.7 million cybersecurity professionals. Closing that gap requires looking much earlier in the pipeline, before students have already decided their path. Interest in computer science peaks in middle school and then drops sharply. Research from Girls Who Code found that 70% of teen girls express interest in cybersecurity, with interest peaking around age 16, but most never pursue it. Many are discouraged by a lack of confidence in their abilities, limited exposure to what the field actually involves, and little awareness of the range of careers cybersecurity offers. Today, women make up less than a quarter of the cybersecurity workforce.
