Les Bell
Blog entry by Les Bell
Only a very short post today, to point to an incredible story.
The Department of Technical and Further Education in Tasmania, decided to run a course in cybersecurity - after all, isn't there a critical "skills shortage" in the field worldwide?
(Short answer: no - but that's a topic for another day.)
They got $A3 million in funding from the federal and state governments, advertised their Certificate IV in Cyber [sic] Security, to run in Hobart and set about staffing and developing the course. They couldn't actually find people with broad experience in cybersecurity, so started with one recruit who had "managed responses to cyber incidents" but not actually been a security professional, and another who had been a "special education, arts, drama and class teacher" - but only started studying security about eight months before landing the job.
Unsurprisingly, students had started withdrawing only three months after the course had started. Even this year, about one-third of students have pulled out.
Anyway, you can read the whole sorry saga here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-29/tastafe-cybersecurity-course-dropouts-staff-issues/105921416.
Sheesh. . . Why didn't they call me? ☹
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About this Blog
I produce this blog while updating the course notes for various courses. Links within a story mostly lead to further details in those course notes, and will only be accessible if you are enrolled in the corresponding course. This is a shallow ploy to encourage ongoing study by our students. However, each item ends with a link to the original source.
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