A recent ISC² Cybersecurity Workforce Study placed the resource gap worldwide at 4.07 million professionals. The challenges we face when grappling with that gap are myriad and are exacerbated by the security paradigm to which we may have historically pledged allegiance.

Last month, in this column, we advanced a discussion of the hermeneutics involved in the interpretations we make daily and of our growing propensity to commit Group Attribution Error.

A couple of months ago, I described in this column how security professionals could unify a divided country. I chose a mask as a symbol of that cohesiveness. But that thin piece of fabric worn around the mouth and nose can also be a gag — a barrier that distances leaders and stifles communication.

Security professionals can incorporate a few simple items to make the remote experience safer, more secure and more productive. Here’s the “shopping list” that should be on every CSO's desk right now and translates across higher education institutions, corporations and more.

Security professionals want functionality like data encryption and VPN to be permanently enabled. Some have taken the approach of completely disabling the insertion of USB devices. This needs to be supported with more fine-grained control. What is the path forward?

Hermeneutics, a hodge-podge of psychology, sociology, anthropology and philosophy — with a dose of linguistics thrown in for good measure — examines the variables around which we construct and impute meaning to our world. This process is more colloquially known as interpretation theory.