PESTLE Analysis of Cybersecurity Education

Cybersecurity is a vital part of digital economies and digital governing but the discipline is suffering from a pronounced skills shortage. Nevertheless, the reasons for the inability of academia to produce enough graduates with the skills that reflect the needs of the cybersecurity industry are not well understood. In this article, we have analysed the skills shortages, gaps, and mismatches affecting cybersecurity education. We performed a Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental (PESTLE) analysis, that allowed us to have an overview of the cybersecurity education environment from multiple perspectives. The results of this analysis highlight 31 different factors affecting cybersecurity education on a European level. These factors were further analysed from the specific perspectives of 11 European countries. In this further analysis, particular attention was given to the linkages between the identified factors. This helped to reveal which factors are connected and to describe how they are mutually dependent. A statistical approach was used to depict the results in a more general and comprehensive way and facilitated the development of our conclusions. Our analysis identifies a lack of European coordination and cooperation towards a common cybersecurity framework as one of the main factors affecting cybersecurity education.