COLUMBIA, S.C. — Benjamin Bohnaker is a cybersecurity student at Midlands Technical College, taking his first class in the Beltline campus's new Center for Business and Information Technologies.
"We learn different types of coding, different types of programming," Bohnaker said. "Lots of different programs. And right now I'm in an IST class for networking, which teaches a lot about how to actually network and how to secure a network and how to build one from the ground up."
He's a sophomore now, but experts say he'll be joining an extremely fast-growing industry when he graduates.
Adrian Brown is the Network Systems Management Program coordinator.
"Currently, the industry is going to grow at an exponential rate," Brown said. "We're looking at upwards of 30% over the next couple of years for the need."
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said information security analysts' employment is expected to grow 32% by 2032, much faster than the average of all occupations. The bureau predicts 16,800 openings for these jobs within the decade. It said increases in remote work, e-commerce and telehealth services play a role.
"Technology moves at an exponentially fast rate. There's a theory called Moore's law, where basically in layman's terms, the technology becomes twice as cheap, but twice as fast within about a year and a half," Brown said. "It's almost a cat and mouse game. The technology increases and advances and then the cybersecurity methodologies have to try and catch up, which is why we have such a large number of need within the industry."
Brown said the industry doesn't have enough people to handle this growth, but Midlands Tech's program is helping fill that need.
"We attempt to help those students fulfill the needs of those employers by training and instructing and giving actual hands on with different scenarios, different tools and techniques and methodologies," Brown said. "As well as frameworks that are centered around industry standards that have been developed by folks like the Department of Defense."
For students like Bohnaker, the industry's expected growth and need for workers is great news.
"It's a very cutthroat industry, but there's a lot of jobs coming out and I'm excited for that and hoping for the best," Bohnaker said.