Borough President Eric Adams says that the city needs to make greater investments in cybersecurity education and jobs after hackers breached the city Law Department’s network last month.
“The recent cyberattack on the Law Department’s network was a wake-up call for our city,” Adams, the Democratic nominee for Mayor, said in a statement. “If we don’t take proactive steps to strengthen our cyber defenses in the public and private sectors, we will be increasingly vulnerable to these kinds of attacks in the future.”
Adams stood with City University of New York Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez Wednesday at City Tech to tout CUNY programs aimed at creating a “pipeline” to cybersecurity jobs for New Yorkers from marginalized backgrounds, but also said that the city needs to invest further resources in the cybersecurity pipeline both as a jobs program and to ensure network security.
“We’re not getting the talent to meet the demand of the jobs,” Adams said at City Tech.
The beep cited recent statistics showing that 63 percent of employers in cybersecurity are looking to fill positions with local talent, with 87 percent expressing confidence that necessary talent exists in the city. But 3/4 of respondents “have encountered difficulty finding experienced hires” for open cybersecurity jobs, which Adams pegged at about 20,000.
Adams had a tech snafu of his own before his appearance: the New York Post reported that the beep was not able to enter the event for about five minutes because he could not find a picture of his vaccination card on his phone.
