While Google may hire some from the cohort, Shuftan says, “they do not intend to hire the bulk of them. They're [Google] definitely doing this because it's core to their mission and values as well, not just for their own hiring purposes.” While discussions on the future of the SCADA beyond this first seven-month program are still underway, “we anticipate that there will be a second cohort following soon after the first,” Shuftan says.
SANS’ commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, along with its mission to help close the cybersecurity skills gap, dovetail with the SCADA.
“Diversity, equity, and inclusion's extremely important to SANS. It's how we got into kind of this mission program/reskilling space and we want to have the biggest impact we can there,” Shuftan says. “And at the same time, we are hearing from both SANS’ customers on the commercial side as well as our own curriculum team that cloud security is so important and it's evolving constantly. And for an industry to evolve in the best way possible, you need diversity in it, people who come from different backgrounds and think in different ways to solve problems. And there's lots of challenges cloud faces as things evolve. So, we see them as really tied together. [With] cloud security evolving and the focus on DEI really coming to the forefront, it naturally felt right, and to work with an org like Google to bring a solution to that or hopefully a model of a bigger solution.”
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