Un articolo della Reuters sull’esiguità dei c.d. “cyberwarriors” e sulla competizione tra militari, agenzie di intelligence ed aziende private per il loro reclutamento.

With growing worries about the threat of “cyber warfare,” militaries around the world are racing to recruit the computer specialists they believe may be central to the conflicts of the 21st century.
But whilst money is plentiful for new forces of “cyber warriors,” attracting often individualistic technical specialists and hackers into military hierarchies is another matter (…).
“My theory is that huge defense agencies – having little clue of what cyber warfare is all about – follow traditional approaches and try to train as many hacking skills as possible,” says Ralph Langner, the civilian German cyber security expert who first identified the Stuxnet computer worm in 2010 (…).
Many experts say the key to successful operations in cyberspace – such as the Stuxnet attack believed to have targeted Iran’s nuclear program by reprogramming centrifuges to destroy themselves – is quality rather than quantity of technical specialists.
“Only a very small number of people are the top notch that you would want to employ for a high-profile operation like Stuxnet,” says Langner, saying that there might be as few as 10 world-class cyber specialists. “These people will probably not be covered with a military environment.” (…)
Speaking on condition of anonymity, one senior European officer with responsibility for cyber complained of struggling to find suitable recruits in part because of competition from the private sector.
Agencies such as the U.S. National Security Agency and Britain’s GCHQ say they lose some of their best talent to Microsoft and Google. But such agencies also pride themselves on their ability to find and retain the kind of eccentric expertise that would struggle to find their place in armies, navies, air forces or regular government departments.
“Higher end capability isn’t principally about spending large amounts of money and having large numbers of people,” says John Bassett, a former senior GCHQ official and now senior fellow at London’s Royal United Services Institute.
“It’s about having a small but sustainable number of very good people with imagination and will as well a technical know-how and we may be more likely to find them in an organization like GCHQ than in the military.”

In breve, il solito problema del reclutamento da parte di strutture pubbliche delle migliori professionalità esistenti sul mercato. Una bella sfida, soprattutto per quelle amministrazioni che necessitano di professionalità… ad “alto valore aggiunto”.